MOVIE REVIEW: Paint

Images courtesy of IFC Films

PAINT— 2 STARS

The veil of Paint’s main character being a send-up of cherished artist, television host, and posthumous internet legend Bob Ross is microscopically thin. It’s also as transparent as a clear pane of glass. We can see what writer-director Brit McAdams is up to, and his premise of putting a personality like that in today’s day and age of television and a more progressive social climate has room for comedy that can tint those proverbial windows.

Right out of the gate, nabbing Owen Wilson to play the Bob Ross cypher Carl Nargle was impeccable casting. His slim build fills the old threads and permed golden curls create a steady glow above his bearded, yet boyish face. Supported by his own signature dulcet voice, often working narration, Wilson’s well-established acting range combining ditsy and folksy enables the 54-year-old to look and act the part in every detail. Nargle is the #4-rated treasure of Vermont and the long-time host of the instructional show “Paint” on PBS’s Burlington affiliate. 

As Paint portrays, Carl’s core viewer demographic watching him paint his Mount Mansfield vistas is the nursing home set huddled around the community TV and the crafty stay-at-home mom crowd. Nevertheless, his artistic smoothness and entrancing manner make him a worshiped hit with the ladies at the station. The members of the fairer sex seem to have little to no problem joining Carl for an evening of fondue at the Cheesepot Depot, an impromptu canvas painting session, and a tumble in sheets on the pull-out bed in the back of his mural-adorned 80s van. As Carl puts it, “Being the total package makes it hard to see the gift inside.”

LESSON #1: DON’T HAVE SEX IN CARS ANYMORE AFTER THE AGE OF 25– Digressing for a moment, yes, we must admit there has long been a practical right of passage of sorts when it comes to intimacy in cars for young people who do not have their own place or privacy. However, unless you are on some adventurous vacation, once you or your lucky partner are old enough to have their own place, it’s time to stop having sex in cars. Those same vans that boast more spacious love-making accommodations than a Honda coupe are also the shady confines of creepers who can’t take people to a real bed. Don’t be part of a red flag.

LESSON #2: HAVE SOME PLATITUDES IN YOUR ARSENAL– That “total package” quote is one of many that serve Carl well on camera and off. His greatest one is his sign-off tagline “Thanks for going to a special place with me.” More often than not, he’s not talking about the painted canvas in front of him. True to Wilson’s line delivery, some of those whispered platitudes are pithy, while others are appropriately nonsensical. Somehow, someway, they work to enthrall fans. 

The PBS Burlington office, helmed by Stephen Root’s exec of double-talk Tony, is filled with Carl’s old flames (Casual’s Michaela Watkins, The Goldbergs star Wendi McLendon-Covey, Luisa Strus of 50 First Dates) and one new one half his age (newcomer Lucy Freyer). The truest one-that-got-away is Watkins’ Katherine, the assistant producer. Expect unfinished business to make it back on the production schedule before the end of Paint. 

At the station, Carl’s easy-going existence as the top dog is threatened with the arrival of a younger artist host named Ambrosia, played by Ciara Renée (DC’s Legends of Tomorrow). Billed to Carl as friendly competition, Ambrosia brings a better variety of projects, doubles the art production, and fulfills a lost female voice. She soon overtakes Carl in the ratings, where the walking time capsule is unable to handle such a change and cracks from the waning attention and focus. It is that notion of time– combined with suspending logic— that outlines the biggest flaw of Paint. 

LESSON #3: A MAN OUT OF HIS TIME– If Carl Nargle is meant to be, once again, a homage to Bob Ross, then the math does not check out. Had he not died in 1995, Ross today would be 80 years old and a dinosaur even by PBS standards. The “Annie’s Song”-backed flashbacks in Paint chronicle about 22 years of broadcast history for Carl. That puts his genesis after the year 2000. Sorry, but no thirty-something man from that era– not even the most devoted nostalgia buff– is taking on, much less pulling off, a soulful 70s/80s bit through those decades and into their fifties. Moreover, multiple women are not falling for that facade without scathing, modern repercussions of broken gender politics.

The narrative scaffolding around Carl Nargle in Paint is terribly flimsy. Not a cog in the story fits his antiquated dimensions, and it shows. Hurdling over entire decades of relevancy, Carl Nargle is ostensibly Austin Powers without the 30-year frozen stasis. That schtick was funnier in 1997 because the displaced character didn’t know any better. That’s not possible here in Paint. There’s not a sheltered enough community off any beaten path in America that could have hidden a Carl Nargle and not course-corrected his aloof and sexist social graces years ago.

There was a measure of true cleverness possible in inserting a throwback maverick character into the present day. Paint wanted to bend a vibe with fiction and flexed too far, to a place where its main character would not survive personally or professionally in the first place. The surrounding characters chipping away at the fraud underneath Carl Nargle– an arc amusingly not all that different from the esteemed Oscar-nominated TAR when you really think about it– exposed nothing we could not already see for ourselves.

A better approach could have been matching the Ross timeline with a period piece. Show a Carl Nargle character thriving in his early fifties at the crest of his appeal only to be challenged by the advancing morals of the scandalous Clinton-era 1990s. He deserves to be pressed harder for what he is or isn’t than Paint. A movie like that would stand a better chance anchoring good comedy complimented by tangible believability. Lastly, there’s one more Nargle line that declares, “I like when art makes people happy.” Yeah, us too, Carl. Us too.

LOGO DESIGNED BY MEENTS ILLUSTRATED (#1107)