‘Paint’ Is a Bad SNL Sketch of Owen Wilson Doing Bob Ross

David Fear
·5 min read
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PAINT - Still 1 - Credit: IFC Films
PAINT - Still 1 - Credit: IFC Films

Let’s be clear about one thing: Owen Wilson is not playing Bob Ross. He’s just a guy named Carl Nargle, who hosts a popular PBS painting show called Paint with Carl Nargle, filmed in a small American town — Burlington, VT., not Muncie, IN. — that has made him a celebrity. The fact that he has a luscious perm, just like the Joy of Painting creator? Totally a coincidence. And that his program is little more than him instructing viewers how to paint pictureseque landscapes of tranquil lakes and friendly trees, in a perfect ASMR voice? Completely random. Besides, Ross wore a plain white-collar shirt, and Nargle wears a plain Western white-collar shirt. Very different. Again, his character is not Bob Ross. Nope. No siree!

If you know anything about Paint, writer-director Brit McAdams’ comedy about a regional TV star fighting for his afternoon timeslot against a younger artist, it’s likely because of that still at the top of this review, the one that made the rounds late last year. There’s Wilson with brush in hand, hairdo pouffed to the heavens and channeling the kitsch icon to a tee. It was a first-rate tease — a single image that inherently promised a version of our man Bob filtered through irony, 60-grit dry wit, and a slight Texas twang. You remember Wilson’s Royal Tenenbaums character Eli Cash, the literary star in suede fringe who claimed that “everyone knows that Custer died at Little Big Horn… what [my] book presupposes is: maybe he didn’t?” Everyone knew this wasn’t going to be a straight-up Bob Ross biopic, but what that single shot presupposed was: What if we had a whole comic performance done in the key of that one Eli Cash line?

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It was the smartest thing the filmmakers could have done to gin up anticipation for this modest, quirkier-than-thou indie, and also the worst. True to Paint’s pre-release press, this is not a retelling of the life and times of the public-TV superstar. Long before the film’s end, however, you will dearly wish it were. No one’s asking for more rags-to-riches biopics in the world. We’ve suffered enough. But the notion of having Wilson craft what’s essentially a first-rate Ross imitation — like an SNL-level parody of the pledge-drive Rembrandt that’s both ludicrous and affectionate — and simply dropping him into a weak-tea All About Eve retread seems like a bit of a missed opportunity. Why bother having a talented actor riff on a beloved television presence so rich with meta-commentary possibilities, and ripe for mockery, if you’re just going to let the fruits of his labor die slowly on the vine?

Nargle has spent decades entertaining everyone from day-drinking barflies to nursing-home lovebirds with his show, and he’s one of the few reasons that Burlington’s financially-strapped PBS station is still around. Unsurprisingly, the gentle-voiced giant of New England landscape painters has let his status as a local legend go to his curly ’do-ed head, and slept with several admirers and most of his female coworkers. His true love, however, remains Katherine (Michaela Watkins), the station’s assistant general manager. Nargle still thinks about that wonderful afternoon they spent together in the rollout bed in the back of his sweet-ass Chevy van, complete with a customized “PAINTR” license plate. (Why didn’t he spell out the full word? “Because you don’t put an ‘E’ in the Mona Lisa.”)

Still, Carl and Katherine’s perpetually twitchy boss Tony (Stephen Root, reliable as always) wants a back-up plan, which is why he’s expanded the popular Paint show from one hour to two. He’s also brought on a new host for that second hour, a young woman named Ambrosia (Ciara Renée). She’s a longtime fan of Carl’s. Ambrosia can also paint two paintings in an hour — a feat previously unheard of in PBS circles! — and prefers to add elements like blood-soaked UFOs to her portraits of pastoral bliss. The new addition to the staff becomes a hit with viewers. She also has possible romantic designs on Catherine. All of which makes Carl, already a dinosaur in ‘70s duds, that much more irrelevant.

Nargle’s got to win back his audience and eventually his job, Ambrosia starts to become more ambitious, the townsfolk are just north of small-town caricatures, yadda yadda yadda. Paint sets up a shooting gallery’s worth of easy targets yet isn’t sure whether it wants to knock any of them down, and while the lack of condescension to Americana archetypes is welcome — we already have one set of Coen brothers, thanks much — it doesn’t stop the feeling that you’re watching a satire confused about what it may be satirizing. The fact that this fuzziness extends to its two main characters is close to a dealbreaker: The movie clearly recognizes that Carl is a walking pipe dream with an actual pipe, who’s manipulative (though he won’t sleep with the twentysomething production assistant who adores him) and an anachronism yearning to be taken seriously as an artist. It also hints at Ambrosia being more than happy to become the Next Big Burlington TV thing. But it doesn’t want either of these two to get their hands too dirty or become too unlikable, which simply strands both of them in a limbo of mild, half-hearted ridicule. Go sharp or go home.

All you’re left with is Wilson’s exquisitely left-of-center take on the master of friendly trees, which keeps creeping toward the sublime before Paint knocks it back into the middle of an undefined road. The actor has honed a certain kind of delusional dude in his work with Wes Anderson over the years, in which little things like talent, competence, and self-awareness take a backseat to a can-do attitude and a Category 1 level of bluster. Wilson also has a way of making these ego monsters seem harmless and sympathetic, thanks to a singularly laconic, deadpan delivery. His Carl Nargle has all of that, in addition to regional fame and a beautifully Dickensian name. The poor guy just doesn’t have much of movie around him to make you think he’s worthy of being in a movie at all.

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