If you’re going to have someone play a Bob Ross-type character in a movie, there’s no one better to do it than Owen Wilson. It’s this casting alone that made me want to watch Paint, in which Wilson stars as a not uncoincidentally-imagined fictional basic cable painter known for his serene landscape portraits.
However, Wilson’s gimmick of channeling Ross’s famous hippie vibes with his trademark chill is only rewarding for so long. While it’s an intentionally silly sendup and a mildly funny world to live in, Paint isn’t nearly as subversive or funny enough to become a new comedy classic.
Wilson plays “Carl Nargle,” a hippie host of a live painting program for the local Burlington PBS affiliate TV station. With his good vibes and worldly bits of wisdom, Carl is beloved in his small town. The ladies especially love him, too. They rush him after every show merely for the chance to hold his paintbrushes.
Times are good for ol’ Carl Nargle. Except–predictably–the times are about to change. Once the station’s ratings start to go south, the station manager (Stephen Root) brings in a new painter. Ambrosia (Ciara Renée), a new hip young gal, is to add to Carl’s success with another hour of live painting.
Carl and the rest of the station are surprised at the new blood that Ambrosia brings to the show. Literally, in the form of her first painting: a UFO drawing up a geyser of blood. It’s quite the change from the peaceful mountains and calm creeks painted by Carl for his mostly-senior viewers. But her fresh energy–and new female empowerment–push Carl to the sidelines. Soon enough, he’s left alone as an aloof artist and out-of-time man.
If this setup sounds similar to Anchorman, it’s because it really is. I wonder if this was a conscious or unconscious template that writer-director Brit McAdams had in mind when creating this movie. With his curly blonde afro and woodsman-styled facial hair, even Carl’s comically dated ’70s appearance channels that of Ron Burgundy.
Paint predictably continues with what you might expect: Carl’s once-fawned-over charm and sex appeal turn quickly into misogyny. And worse (to him), his landscape paintings are soon enough regarded as dull, superficial, and uninspired. The film weaves in something of a love triangle, in which Carl works with his former love, Katherine (Michaela Watkins). Surprisingly, she also explores a new side of her femininity with a fling with Ambrosia.
What’s more unfortunate is that I did find an interesting story a few layers underneath Paint, which comes about towards the end of the film. When Carl’s sidelined and down and out, he finally confronts how his “hotel art” compares to more compelling works like modernism. The film somewhat confusingly takes place in the modern day, not the ’70s that the movie constructs itself to be in.
He wanders into the Burlington modern art museum and looks at art in a Ferris Bueller-like montage, which was compelling. And Carl going mad, flinging paint from the rafters, is when the movie feels most alive. Could there have been a version of this film that was more interested in telling that story? Versus just being edged out of a low-performing public access channel? Does Paint itself stay in too familiar territory to be worthwhile?
I wish the film followed the blueprint that last year’s Weird Al parody-biography Weird: The Al Yankovic Story did so well: weaving biography and wild absurdism together actually drew laughs. But Paint is more of a low-grade daze; the kind of sluggish high you’d feel sparking some pot found in the back of your dresser drawer from years ago.
While perfectly cast, Owen Wilson is only so watchable as the film drags on. It’s enough to make you wonder how much longer it’ll take for the paint to finish drying.
1h 36m. Rated PG-13 for sexual/suggestive material, drug use, and smoking.
