It's interesting how different people can look at the same thing and come away with such diverse reactions. I decided to watch this based on the many positive comments I had read. Unfortunately I cannot pitch my tent in that camp, since this movie never engaged me.
John Turturro plays Al Fountain, an uptight electrical engineer who is away from home and in charge of a construction crew somewhere in the southeast US. When Al catches his crew having some fun fifteen minutes before knocking off for the day, he instructs them to get back to work. The sight of Tutturro in a hard hat being taken seriously by a bunch of burly construction workers should have alerted me that this movie was going to be part fantasy, and that turned out to be the case.
The first part of the movie is spent in showing us what a nerd Al is. A closet full of neatly hung white shirts and dark pants, nightly calls home at precisely 9:00 PM, an inability to get along with ordinary people, stilted phone conversations with his wife and son, and so forth.
Obviously Al needs to be shown how to loosen up a bit and appreciate the wondrous variety of experience, and sure enough Al meets just the right person to introduce him to more abundant living, The Kid. The Kid (Sam Rockwell), in buckskins, is a rifle-toting young lad wearing a coonskin hat who deals in selling such items as plastic deer and garden gnomes. Through a sequence of unlikely events Al winds up staying at The Kid's house--a facing wall opening onto an open-air courtyard that is lighted like it is decorated for a large Christmas party. The Kid frequently comments that he is off the grid, so how he powered his lights and television puzzled me. There are elements of pure fantasy, such as Al's seeing things in reverse like water being poured into a glass or a kid riding a bicycle. Why these irrelevant scenes were in there escaped me. In the director's commentary he remarks that these scenes were filmed by running the sequences backward. Who would have imagined that? I realize that questioning the believability of anything here is not to accept what I perceive is meant to be quirky whimsy. But I could not accept the absurdities presented.
And what are the rewards of living a more carefree life? Such things as shooting out expensive window glass, jumping into lakes naked, cheating on your wife, shooting holes in tubs of paint, getting beat up while others stand around watching helplessly, eating crushed Oreo cookies and milk for breakfast, and so forth. Is an argument being made here for the value of being a nerd, and staying a nerd?
John Turturro plays Al Fountain, an uptight electrical engineer who is away from home and in charge of a construction crew somewhere in the southeast US. When Al catches his crew having some fun fifteen minutes before knocking off for the day, he instructs them to get back to work. The sight of Tutturro in a hard hat being taken seriously by a bunch of burly construction workers should have alerted me that this movie was going to be part fantasy, and that turned out to be the case.
The first part of the movie is spent in showing us what a nerd Al is. A closet full of neatly hung white shirts and dark pants, nightly calls home at precisely 9:00 PM, an inability to get along with ordinary people, stilted phone conversations with his wife and son, and so forth.
Obviously Al needs to be shown how to loosen up a bit and appreciate the wondrous variety of experience, and sure enough Al meets just the right person to introduce him to more abundant living, The Kid. The Kid (Sam Rockwell), in buckskins, is a rifle-toting young lad wearing a coonskin hat who deals in selling such items as plastic deer and garden gnomes. Through a sequence of unlikely events Al winds up staying at The Kid's house--a facing wall opening onto an open-air courtyard that is lighted like it is decorated for a large Christmas party. The Kid frequently comments that he is off the grid, so how he powered his lights and television puzzled me. There are elements of pure fantasy, such as Al's seeing things in reverse like water being poured into a glass or a kid riding a bicycle. Why these irrelevant scenes were in there escaped me. In the director's commentary he remarks that these scenes were filmed by running the sequences backward. Who would have imagined that? I realize that questioning the believability of anything here is not to accept what I perceive is meant to be quirky whimsy. But I could not accept the absurdities presented.
And what are the rewards of living a more carefree life? Such things as shooting out expensive window glass, jumping into lakes naked, cheating on your wife, shooting holes in tubs of paint, getting beat up while others stand around watching helplessly, eating crushed Oreo cookies and milk for breakfast, and so forth. Is an argument being made here for the value of being a nerd, and staying a nerd?