The Peanut Butter Falcon
“The Peanut Butter Falcon” is a nice little movie that barely goes anywhere, but audiences, in a certain mood, might be willing to drift along with it. It’s most notable for starring, in a principal role, a man with Down syndrome, Zack Gottsagen, who is a good actor — he’s funny and interesting and holds the screen.
Basically, it’s about two guys who don’t quite belong anywhere and about how they come together. Shia LaBeouf is Tyler, a rough mess of a guy living in the Outer Banks of North Carolina. He’s griefstricken over the death of his older brother but doesn’t have the emotional vocabulary to face his own misery, and so he’s foolish and destructive. He barely gets out of town alive, with a gang of tough guys on his tail.
Meanwhile, Zack lives in an oldage home. He’s young, but his family has abandoned him, and the state has nowhere else to put him. He has an exceptionally nice attendant (Dakota Johnson), but that doesn’t alter the fact that he’s facing a life sentence of being warehoused. And so he jumps out the window in his little white briefs, forgetting to take his clothes and shoes with him. His ambition is to become a professional wrestler.
Inevitably the two men meet and go on the run together, and how much you enjoy this movie will depend on how much you enjoy the interaction between LaBeouf and Gottsagen. Let’s lavish some praise on this: It’s never quite boring. And the movie does benefit from LaBeouf ’s portrayal of Tyler as a genuinely rough character.
But there’s nothing here to propel our interest from scene to scene. There’s nothing the characters want that we hope to see happen. Zack’s desire to be a wrestler is more a fantasy than anything else. And Tyler is truly aimless. It’s almost like his life is over before it has even started. Yet there’s poignancy in that, too, and a further point of contact between Tyler and Zack. Tyler has blown his chances, and Zack was never given a chance, so either way they’re both out of chances and depending on each other.
Writerdirectors Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz eventually figure out a way to put both characters on a raft floating down the Pamlico Sound, and you have to give these filmmakers credit for nerve. A fellow named Mark Twain cornered the market on two outcasts floating on a raft, enjoying their freedom and each other’s company.
But I knew Huckleberry Finn. I worked with him. Huckleberry Finn was a friend of mine. And, well, you get the drift.