Owen Wilson’s ‘Paint’ Is a Bizarrely Unfunny Bob Ross Satire
Paint concerns a small-time celebrity artist named Carl Nargle (Owen Wilson), and his moniker turns out to be the funniest thing about the film (in theaters April 7), which riffs on Bob Ross and his landscape-painting legacy and spirit with a calmness that never evolves into actual comedy. So unevenly structured that it feels like it was either written on the fly or cut to pieces in the editing room, Brit McAdams’ directorial debut fails to locate a humorous rhythm or coherently develop its collection of characters. It’s the skeleton of a promising idea rather than a full-fledged movie.
In the present day, Carl is the toast of his Vermont hometown courtesy of his daily PBS program Paint, which, like Ross’ The Joy of Painting, features him standing at an easel and narrating what he’s doing with gentle feel-good aphorisms. Carl has a big puffy afro, wears ornate cowboy shirts, and smokes a curved pipe. In both appearance and demeanor, he comes across as a cross between Ross and The Royal Tenenbaums’ Eli Cash, pitched at a register that’s both serene and arrogant.
Carl enchants his viewers, including a group of nursing home senior citizens and a couple of roughnecks at a bar, and he’s fawned over by his staffers, including station manager Tony (Stephen Root) and employees Wendy (Wendi McLendon-Covey), Jenna (Lucy Freyer), and Katherine (Michaela Watkins), the last of whom was once his true-love girlfriend before fame and betrayal spoiled their romance.