Adapting Downtown Owl, the novel by Chuck Klosterman, co-directors Lily Rabe and Hamish Linklater, who additionally wrote the screenplay, ship a messy, aimless movie. It has moments of intrigue which might be shortly extinguished by the movie’s makes an attempt at doing an excessive amount of. The movie’s depiction of small city life within the early 80s is grim, but when it had centered on the methods through which its characters really feel caught it may need made up for every thing else. The difference is a missed alternative made up of scattered items with no clear imaginative and prescient.
Julia (Rabe) lands a instructing job in Owl, North Dakota within the fall of 1983. She claims she’s giving her husband some house to complete writing, however there’s a palpable stress that lives beneath the floor. Owl is so small that even the theater closed, and there isn’t all that a lot to do however drink excessively, which is what Julia begins doing after being invited out to the native bar by Naomi (Vanessa Hudgens). Julia takes a liking to Vance (Henry Golding), a former soccer participant turned rancher, however is delay when he retains his distance, and befriends retired soccer coach Horace (Ed Harris) who eases her transition to small city life. In the meantime, a couple of of Julia’s college students implore her to do one thing a few predatory coach.
Downtown Owl has a sure appeal about it at first, however that doesn’t final too lengthy. When you suppose the story is main someplace, you’ll be upset to seek out that it doesn’t quantity to something substantial. The ending is abrupt and unusual, as if it’s meant to make us really feel deeply about these characters that by no means get the event they deserve. The script doesn’t correctly serve any of them, and also you’ll be hard-pressed to really feel something however indifference. By the point Julia decides she’s able to stay the life she desires on her personal phrases, we is perhaps inclined to easily shrug in response. When even the characters themselves don’t appear very invested in what’s occurring round them — Julia’s response to a coach (Finn Wittrock) courting a teen woman (Arden Michalec) is “What if it’s love?” — then why ought to we?
There may be some effort to ascertain the collective feeling of jadedness and dread that encapsulates the city, however the movie’s focus is just too jumbled to make it work. It’s additionally tonally inconsistent. The journey in the direction of its ending is as aimless as its characters, and even the inventive selections, attention-grabbing on their very own, don’t provide a lot depth; they’re merely good concepts that don’t come collectively cohesively. It leaves us with a sense that the chaos is unintentional, there solely as a result of Linklater and Rabe don’t have a agency grasp on the supply materials. The characters have a myriad of flaws and plights that might have made them compelling, however the movie fails to discover them past the floor.
All this makes Downtown Owl reasonably hole. The potential is misplaced, and it’s laborious to decipher what the movie was in the end going for, particularly with the haphazard therapy of its story and characters. It leaves us feeling confused and misplaced when pondering the movie’s message, and it doesn’t assist that the execution leaves a lot to be desired. In the end, a couple of vivid spots aren’t sufficient to make Downtown Owl worthwhile viewing.
Downtown Owl screened on the 2023 Tribeca Movie Pageant. The movie is 91 minutes lengthy and never but rated.