Poor Roy Eberhardt, teenager, his parents' jobs require them to move often, so he never gets any stability in one location. The movie begins with them in the beautiful mountainous country of Montana. What would be the exact opposite? How about Florida?? Yep, they move to Florida, the Gulf Coast area not too far from Tampa. As Roy gets to know his new environment, he meets the big bully kid on the bus, and has to break his nose to get away. Out the bus window he sees a kid about his age running very fast with no shoes. And, he somehow befriends a no-nonsense girl named Beatrice.
Luke Wilson plays a hapless local cop, Officer David Delinko, but Wilson plays it with enough sympathy that we actually learn to like him. His heart is in the right place. Underrated actor Tim Blake Nelson is Curly Branitt, hired to guard a near future construction site for a new pancake house, the 100th in its chain. Manager Chuck Muckle is determined to get that feather in his cap, the 100th one.
The problem is, the land set aside is also habitat for a ground dwelling owl (I don't even know if those exist, but no matter...) and building the new pancake house would be the death of them. So much of the movie is Roy, Beatrice, and Mullet Fingers doing things on the sly to prevent the dozers from beginning construction.
Brie Larson was only 15 and not well-known, she is Beatrice who becomes a friend of Roy's and helps thwart the illegal construction project.
Robert Wagner has a token appearance as Mayor Grandy. Jimmy Buffett, who was a producer, wrote some of the songs, also has a good part as teacher Mr. Ryan. I don't know Buffett, and didn't realize at first it was him, but was impressed with his natural acting manner.
SPOILERS. As the teenagers begin to learn more about the construction project, they follow the paper trail. Specifically, they wonder how the environmental impact was overlooked. They found it wasn't, and the company was hiding the fact that owls were threatened. Straightening that out just in time, the location was spared and 3 teens were new best friends.
Update: November 2023 - My wife and I watched it again, on DVD from our public library. Just a nicely entertaining movie with no shootings, no sex, and no R-rated language.
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