'Paint' dabs at comedy as portrait of quirky TV artist

May 22, 2023

Rated PG-13. At Landmark Kendall Square, AMC Boston Common and suburban theaters.

A past-present temporal mashup, "Paint" from first-time feature writer-director Brit McAdams is set in a world that has stood still, or at least been slow to catch up to our present day. The film, which is set in Vermont and is said to be a send-up of pioneering TV artist Bob Ross, is a deadpan, perhaps too deadpan and not-very-funny comedy that paints a portrait (excuse me, it's contagious) of Carl Nargle (Owen Wilson), a bearded, ‘fro-sporting, pipe-smoking star of the local Burlington, Vermont PBS station. Carl's show is entitled "Paint," and on it he, OK, paints pictures, all of them of Vermont's Mount Mansfield, the highest peak in the state.

Carl is a superstar to legions of oldsters and barflies enraptured by his every word (and picture). This includes his coworkers, who are mostly women, as well as the station manager Tony (Stephen Root), who cannot ingratiate himself with Carl enough and proudly displays one of Carl's paintings on his office wall. When he isn't on live television, Carl tools around in his "Van-tastic" orange Chevy van, which is equipped with "Paintr" vanity plates, a Citizens Band radio and a "custom-made" sofa bed.

Carl, who lives in a barn lined with his paintings, has his choice of the women at the station, including his ex Katherine (Michaela Watkins). The two split up after Katherine cheated on Carl with a Vermont Mountain Express hunk. But she still has feelings for him. Also under Carl's spell are middle-aged Wendy (Wendi McLendon-Covey), young staffer Jenna (the likable Lucy Freyer) and the strangely wound-up Beverly (Lusia Strus). In the lives of all of these people comes Ambrosia (a charismatic Ciara Renee), a young painter inspired by Carl "as a child," who becomes the station's new star and the latest subject of a cushy feature story in the Vermont daily the Burlington Bonnet. Carl is upset, and not even a suggestive fondue dinner at the local eatery Cheesepot with Jenna is going to cheer him up.

Carl is partial to vintage leather jackets and embroidered shirts. Just when you are wondering when this story is set, Jenna calls an Uber to take her home. What's that? Carl asks. Half the dialogue in "Paint" is weirdly or openly suggestive ("I’m hot as a hot pocket"). Half of it makes me gag.

Carl is obsessed in getting a painting into the not-very-distinguished Burlington Museum of Art. The Museum's director (Michael Pemberton) seriously suggests Carl donate his work to Motel 6. Like many of the film's narrative threads, this one is OK, but not as funny as it might have been.

Wendy has a speech in which she tells everyone that when Carl told her she looked nice in a track suit, she wore track suits that had the word, "Juicy" sewn on the butt to church for a year. Ambrosia drives Katherine to a house and comes on to her. Getting out of the car, Katherine remarks that she has never had sex with a woman. As it turns out, the house belongs to Ambrosia's parents and they are within earshot. A lot of the laughs are derived from that sort of inappropriate timing or speech. On the soundtrack, we hear such old-time standards as John Denver's "Annie's Song" ("You fill up my senses…," Gordon Lightfoot's "If You Could Read My Mind" and Jerry Reed's "When You’re Hot, You’re Hot." In other words, even the music is not funny.

Wilson has played this sort of not-quite-living-in-the-real-world type before "Zoolander 2," "Drillbit Taylor" and "You, Me and Dupree." He's fine as Nargle, but certainly not juicy, and I have always liked him better in more earthbound roles.

("Paint" contains drug use, sexually suggestive scenes and language and pipe-smoking)

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