It’s not like I thought this film rocked, but if you told me a 2012 Southern river po’ boy film was gonna get a Best Pic nod, I would have selected Mud far above Beasts of the Southern Wild. Two river ratlings, Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) share a secret – somewhere in their Arkansas river delta, there’s a tiny island. This Ellis Island is even smaller than the one containing the Statue of Liberty. Similarly, you gotta look skyward for a treat. Ellis and Neckbone have claimed a treeboat.
Now, you would think a boat 20 feet up a tree would be unoccupied, but noooooooo. This one holds Mud, that is to say a drifter who goes by, “Mud.” There’s an ethereal quality to Mud (Matthew McConaughey); hard to believe a guy named after the two grounded elements (earth, water) could evoke an airy feel, but it’s there. Mud appears like magic. His cross-imbedded footprints belie presence, but he doesn’t actually appear until the boys have exhausted their brief search – as if Mud himself chose that very moment to exist, as if possessing the powers of a deity. His name is, literally, “Mud.” Of course, when your name is Mud, you gotta believe you’re destined to be persona non-grata sooner or later. And Mud is a puzzle. He is confined to the island because he’s being hunted, but treats his prison less as punishment and more as a rehabilitation tool. Mud uses the boys to deliver messages to Juniper (Reese Witherspoon). I’m really surprised these messages don’t come with instructions for a change of clothes, but, in retrospect, it is 
Matthew McConaughey.
So it’s “M-C-C-O-N-A-U-G-H-E-Y” is it? Sure, do enough good work and I’ll learn how to spell your name. You listenin’, Shea LeBoueouaufffff ? Anyhoo, Matty No-shirt seems to be finding himself, much like Alec Baldwin, as he ages. The roles still involve boyish charm, but there’s more depth to him, as if the man himself was born in his 40s – he just needed to get there to start being relevant.
The title is Mud, but the story is really about how coming-of-age Ellis responds to the stimuli around him: the poverty of riverboat life, the blue collar values of his divorcing parents, this mysterious stranger who needs Ellis as much as Ellis needs him, and Neckbone. “Neckbone,” huh? Imagine being so poor you can’t even afford a decent nickname.
Ellis doesn’t lack for courage. He has absolutely no problem visiting this man he just met, who is wanted by the police, on a deserted island, at night, alone. He has no problem asking out a high school girl four years his senior. He also, unfortunately, has no problem slugging a guy, any guy, unprovoked, in the jaw. He does the latter thrice in the film. There’s only one place for a kid who starts fights as often as Ellis does – juvee. That part is just my personal observation; Mud never touches the subject of Ellis’ quick-to-punch instinct. I’m sure the fans will point to this as “gritty.” I kinda saw it within the general mosaic of whitetrashitude. Enjoy what you can of Mud, but don’t pay homage to that mosaic.
♪As I went down to the river to play
Studying a boat in trees a-sway
And who shall meet me with a frown?
Matthew McConaughey♫
Rated PG-13, 130 Minutes
D: Jeff Nichols
W: Jeff Nichols
Genre: River squalor
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Misunderstood drifters
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: The makers of Beasts of the Southern Wild
♪ Parody Inspired by “Down to the River to Pray”
