It's not easy being Carl Nargle. Sure, he's the most famous painter in Vermont. But that's entirely because of an art-instruction show he hosts called "The Joy of Painting," which has been beaming out of the Burlington PBS station for 22 years. The provincial stardom this show has brought him has been richly fulfilling, especially on the carnal front (Nargle groupies abound), but Carl feels it has also obscured the impressive breadth of his talent. "Sometimes," he says, "I think being the total package makes it hard for people to see the gift inside."
Although the movie has been critically dismissed in early reviews, "Paint" is an amiable, offbeat mainstream comedy whose big-hearted charm is only barely suggested by its trailer. With Owen Wilson in the role of local art god Carl Nargle, the movie has a sweet appeal; but its tone is also quite biting at times, and the picture is fueled by memorable lines and winningly detailed performances. (The character of Carl is modeled on the late PBS painting-show host Bob Ross, the man with the soporific murmur and imposing corona of Afro-white-guy hair. But the real-life Ross is just a jumping-off point — this is not a Bob Ross biopic.)
As the story begins, Carl's self-centered life is starting to tilt sideways. Times are changing, and the suits at his longtime TV home suddenly want something a bit zippier than a middle-aged guy dabbing happy little trees ("Arthur the evergreen" he names one) onto an endless series of landscape paintings, most of them indistinguishable from one another. (Carl's artistic devotion to Vermont's Mount Mansfield makes Cezanne's obsession with Mont Sainte-Victoire seem like a passing fancy.)
Trouble clouds roll in with the arrival at the station of a younger painter/host named Ambrosia (Ciara Renee, of "The Flash"). She has her own take on landscape painting (adding such kooky touches as sci-fi alien-invasion imagery), and viewers like her. Carl immediately recognizes the threat she poses.
Also complicating Carl's once placid existence is the coterie of ex-girlfriends by whom he's surrounded. They're all employed at the station and are all in various stages of dealing with a Carl Nargle problem. The oldest of these love interests is Katherine (Michaela Watkins), the station's program director. She still harbors considerable affection for her ex and wishes she didn't. ("I feel like I wasted my whole life not loving someone else," she says.) Then there's Carl's latest squeeze, the twenty-something Jenna (Lucy Freyer), who's still in an early phase of Nargle worship. (When Carl gifts her with one of his many, many paintings, she says, "Does this mean I'm your muse? I've always wanted to be one of those.")
Wilson walks a fine line in portraying Carl — turning up his sunny smile when necessary to project a mediagenic charisma but then blithely embracing the character's calculating insincerity. ("I am but the brush in God's hand," he says, almost as if he believed it.)
The picture floats along on a solid, throwback soundtrack (John Denver, Jerry Reed, Gordon Lightfoot) and the skills of its supporting cast, especially the invaluable Stephen Root — who invests the station manager, Tony, with a grumpy energy that recalls the late Rip Torn — and the sharp, pretty Freyer, who has a cheese-fondue scene with Wilson that's a mini-marvel of double-entendre banter. (Freyer's newcomer resume includes just a bit of TV and one off-Broadway show, but she's here to stay.) And Wendi McLendon-Covey, playing another of Carl's guttering flames, puts just the right New England spin on her recollection of an early dinner date with the great man: "He finished his chowder and most of his bread bowl and said, 'You wanna touch my sandals?'"
The movie should be a calling card for writer-director Brit McAdams, a TV and documentary veteran who demonstrates an admirable determination to keep things tight and moving right along. He's also found a compact way of explaining the televisual appeal of the whispery Carl Nargle (and Bob Ross before him). As Carl is wrapping up one of his shows, McAdams cuts to a divey barroom, where a blotto patron is gazing up at a TV, on which Carl is intoning one of his trademark phrases: "Thanks for goin' to a special place with me... Carl Nargle." Then he's gone, the show is over, and the drunk at the bar blinks and mumbles, "I almost forgot where I was for a second."
Kurt Loder is the film critic for Reason Online. To find out more about Kurt Loder and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators website at www.creators.com.
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