It is a shame that Paint wasn’t very good because it seems like the kind of film I’d make. It is the kind of film in which jokes are subtle, like where a stoplight lingers turning a fun moment into an awkward one. It is entirely human nature; it seems like a guffaw could be had, but on screen, it comes off as cringe. It is the kind of film that tries to get comic mileage out of the name “Carl Nargle.” It is the kind of film in which Bob Ross is clearly being torn to shreds even though he’s never named in the film. Is that funny? Is that fair?
Donning a ridiculous white-person’s afro (“Eurofro?”), while sporting a tobacco pipe and an embroidered shirt, Carl Nargle (Owen Wilson) is the star of the Burlington PBS station. Every day, he goes live and -for an hour- he paints a picture of Mount Mansfield, the tallest point in Vermont. Carl is narcissistic, egotistical, shallow, myopic, and a womanizer, but he’s so laid back that it takes a while for all these qualities to
come to our attention.
Carl is obsessed with Mount Mansfield because he once overheard the curator of the Burlington Museum complain that the venue has no Mount Mansfield landscape. The problem is that while Carl Nargle is a PBS darling, he hasn’t the talent to transcend his milieu. All of his paintings of Mount Mansfield are fine film fodder for the kind of person who would turn of PBS to watch someone Paint for an hour, but dogshit compared to, say, a Picasso.
The film comes to us at a breaking point in the life of Carl Nargle. The perpetually low-key disappointment king has become a stale fixture and new blood, Ambrosia (Ciara Renée) has come to vie for his throne. -If you can call being king of midday local PBS a throne- Ambrosia finds an immediate following of her own by creating TWO paintings in an hour instead of one. And, wouldn’t you know it, that monster paints something other than Mount Mansfield. Who would do such a thing? This is the beginning of the end for Carl’s PBS reign.
And this is kinda where the film loses me, for it isn’t willing to Paint Carl as a hero. He isn’t. And yet at the same time, Ambrosia is still a secondary character. We are still very much in the world of Carl Nargle, no matter how depressing his life gets. Yes, I see the tongue-in-cheek humor when even Carl’s university class rebels against his shtick, yet as an audience, we’re now adrift and rudderless. I don’t care about the hero or any of the secondary players. Where do you go from there?
The makers of this film thought all they had to do was let Owen Wilson cosplay as Bob Ross and the rest would magically follow. They were half right. It is an absurd look and one genuinely crying for ridicule. But I know nothing of the life of the real Bob Ross. Does he deserve this treatment? Is he the kind of guy who breaks up over CB radio? Is he the kind of pretentious jackass who mouths shit like: “being the total package means missing the gift inside?” Did he end all of his shows and evenings with “thanks for going to a special place with me.” If so, yeah, Bob, you had this coming. Still, it doesn’t make the film good.
There was once a soft-spoken man of paint
Turns out, he wasn’t much of a saint
Petty and cruel
Cheated as a rule
And his accomplishments could be summed up with “ain’t”
Rated PG-13, 96 Minutes
Director: Brit McAdams
Writer: Brit McAdams
Genre: It was funnier on storyboards
Type of being most likely to enjoy this film: People who loathe Bob Ross? Do those people exist?
Type of being least likely to enjoy this film: People who think comedy should lead to laughter
