It’s no coincidence that Carl Nagle, Owen Wilson’s character in the new comedy “Paint” (now playing in South Florida theaters) resembles the late public-TV painter Bob Ross, whose posthumous popularity continues to boom on social media. Like Ross, Carl sports a puffy ginger Afro and attires himself like the sort of cowboy who’s never seen a spur. And like Ross, he makes a living hosting a painting instructional series on, in the movie’s case, Burlington, Vermont’s PBS affiliate, where he has accrued a cult audience of longtime viewers, lulling them into a place of serenity with his whispery, hypnotic, palliative cadences.
But the similarities end there. “Paint” is not a Bob Ross biopic; it’s not even a stealth version of Ross’ story with the name changed for artistic license. It merely exploits Ross’s branding for a middlebrow satire about artistic hubris and a changing zeitgeist, set against a public-television landscape it seldom seems to understand.
We meet Carl reigning over his domain, a quiet rock star with acolytes galore. Despite painting only variations on a theme—undistinguished bucolic landscapes of Mount Mansfield—his dulcet tones and folksy demeanor keep wheelchair-bound seniors rapt in their assisted-living facilities, and he has all but turned the female staffers at the station into groupies melting over his every utterance. Even a couple of chronic drinkers at a local bar watch his program, transfixed: “I almost forgot where I was for a second,” one offers, when Carl’s show ends.
But Carl’s kingdom is soon to collapse. His ratings are not what they used to be, and the station has hired an upstart new painter, Ambrosia (Ciara Renée) to follow Carl’s program, and she’s a more dynamic talent: He paints mountains and streams, while she paints UFOs spouting beams of blood. Knocked off his perch—and with bruises accumulating on his fragile ego—this longtime womanizer and one-trick painter reflects on his past mistakes, embarking on a road-to-Damascus journey.
“Paint” is cringe-y for the wrong reasons: not because it’s uncomfortable to watch, but because its comedy is arid, sexist and unfunny. The screenplay, from writer-director Brit McAdams, has a low opinion of women, pretty much all of whom slaver over, or have slavered over, the movie’s protagonist, to the point that their identities are wrapped around him. Its gags died with the “Naked Gun” franchise: This is the sort of film in which “goofy sex in the back of a van” is a recurring motif.
Good satire deploys absurdism in otherwise believable environments, exaggerating the familiar for comic effect. But “Paint” lacks roots in a recognizable reality. It’s ostensibly set in modern times (to wit, one character calls an Uber), yet all of the televisions, with their low-def receptions, resemble boxy old units from the ‘70s to the ‘90s. The movie’s PBS station looks more like 1980s public-access television, with its laughable programming and shoestring production values, than a contemporary affiliate such as Vermont Public, which in 2022 declared net assets of more than $84 million. Ah, but why allow such picayune details to get in the way of a chintzy joke?
When “Paint” succumbs to sentimentality, it’s even more unconvincing. The movie loads irony upon irony except when it dispenses hokey aphorisms as novel insights, all to gift its protagonist with a redemption he hasn’t earned and doesn’t deserve. If Bob Ross were a less polite man, he’d be rolling in his grave right about now. I, however, can project my criticisms loud and clear.
“Paint” is playing now at Cinemark Palace 20 in Boca Raton, AMC Pompano Beach 18 and other area theaters.
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