96 min | PG-13 | April 7, 2023 | IFC Films
Carl Nargle is the most famous public-access painter in Vermont, a Bob Ross clone in a perm and a leisure suit who has coasted on soft tones and softer ego for decades. Then the station hires a younger, better painter and his kingdom of one starts to crack. The premise wants to be a comedy. It forgot to be funny.
Carl Nargle hosts a painting show on a Vermont public television station. He wears a perm and a leisure suit and drives a custom van. He paints the same mountain over and over and treats the women around him as a rotating supply of admiration. The film positions him as a small man who built a tiny kingdom out of mediocrity and mistook it for greatness. The target is the fragile male ego that confuses a captive audience for actual talent.
Owen Wilson plays Carl with total commitment to the bit. He speaks in the breathy half-whisper of a man who believes every word he says is profound. Wilson never winks at the camera, and that discipline is the best thing here. Michaela Watkins plays Katherine, the station manager and former lover Carl discarded, and she carries the only real wound in the film. Wendi McLendon-Covey and Ciara Renee fill out the orbit of women Carl has used, and Stephen Root plays the station head Tony with weary calculation. The cast is sharper than the material that surrounds it.
Brit McAdams writes and directs in a register of relentless deadpan. The production design nails the specific ugliness of 1990s public access, all wood paneling and brown carpet and bad studio lighting. McAdams shoots the painting segments straight, letting Carl’s vacant patter run long. The problem is that the deadpan has only one speed. The film mistakes stillness for wit and lets scenes drift past the point where the joke has already landed or failed.
This is a comedy too dour to laugh at and a character study too thin to feel anything for. The idea is good. A satire of soft masculinity dressed up as a gentle painting show is a real movie waiting to be made. McAdams sets up the contradiction and then refuses to push on it. The film stares at Carl Nargle for an entire feature and never decides whether it pities him, despises him, or simply ran out of things to say.