Peanut Butter Falcon
Tell Hollywood’s top executives you’ve got a script where a guy with Down Syndrome runs around on a beach in his tighty-whiteys for 90 minutes and you’ve got their attention. Throw in Shia LaBeouf, fresh off his latest arrest for public urination or punching a crossing guard, and that lady from 50 Shades of Grey, except this time she doesn’t show her tits but still can’t act worth shit. Now you’ve got box office gold, baby!
Fuck Star Wars. Pixar can blow me. Avengers will rot in the WalMart $5 bin alongside the Baby Geniuses and bundles of Hallmark Christmas movies starring Joanna Kerns. The big money’s in Down Syndrome!
I know from experience that there is a market for videos of mentally disabled people dancing in their underwear. Back when I worked at All-American Video we had two shelves crammed with VHS tapes of exactly that, some of which my boss Dipshit Suzanne made herself. Those things were more popular than the pornos. They were also the ones most likely to be returned without being rewound. Also, to be jizzed on.
Notice how I say Down Syndrome and not retard? My cousin Larry, whom I used to call Retard Cousin Larry, asked me to stop saying that word. As I have learned, it’s insulting and dehumanizing. I agree. Instead, he asked that I call him Good King Larry, and his friends Pretty Good Princes. After a little negotiation, we settled on using Down Syndrome instead, which I told him was a mid-level royalty, between being a Viscount or a Baron.
Peanut Butter Falcon, though, is not like those creepy videos we used to rent. First of all, it wasn’t filmed in someone’s basement. In fact, it looks fucking fantastic, shot along North Carolina’s Outer Banks, all rusted metal, rotted wood and lapping waves. There are herons, alligators and striped bass. You can almost smell the salt water and feel the layer of grit on every surface. Second of all, this movie has a plot. It’s not just a hand-held camera following a mentally-challenged guy around a wood paneled room in someone’s basement while he cries and keeps asking, “Am I done? Can I go home now, please?”
Zak (Zack Gotsaggen) is an adult with Down Syndrome, abandoned by his family and warehoused in a crummy state-run old folks’ home. This is where he will be for the rest of his life, watching a lifelong parade of busted-ass old people arrive, eat pudding, die and be replaced. Sort of like being a busboy at Golden Corral, but for 60 years.
Zak is relatively high functioning, enough so that he knows he’s being fucked by the system, but not enough to take care of himself. He has dreams of becoming a wrestler and repeatedly watches an old advertisement for one because, well, what the fuck else is he going to do? He wants out of the hell the state’s given him and frequently tries to escape. The movie opens with dashing out the front door and getting knocked on his ass by a big nurse. They were ready for him.
His 80-something roommate (Bruce Dern) has a better plan, though, and helps Zak slip through the bars on his room while lubed and stripped down to his skivvies. The young man runs out into the night and after a long while hides under the tarp of a fishing boat owned by Tyler (Shia LaBeouf) who is not mentally disabled but is definitely good-decision-disabled. Tyler is on the lam after burning some rivals’ crab pots and he unknowingly takes Zak along for the ride.
This is where Peanut Butter Falcon gets squishy and a bit obvious. The young man who accidentally killed the brother he loved and has been lashing out ever since just needs to feel useful, and the guy with Down Syndrome just needs a friend. You can see where it’s going, and there are no surprises except some unfortunate story choices in the third act.
Tyler is trying to escape to Florida, and Zak wants to go that way to go to the wrestling school from the old commercials he watched. The two pair up and zig-zag down the Pamlico Sound, mostly on a raft given to them by a token wise old black man, who also happens to be blind. Yeah, the movie ain’t getting points for subtlety. In fact, it might lose some for this and for a convenience store owner who keeps moonshine behind the counter.
In hot pursuit are Tyler’s murderous rivals and clueless, well-meaning but always fully clothed worker from the old folk home named Eleanor (Dakota Johnson). Of course, she finds them, and of course she finds the sweet, soft center under Tyler’s rough bad-boy exterior. Sort of like he’s a Cadbury Egg made of sandpaper instead of chocolate.
Rather than return Zak to his prison-like living situation, she is inspired by the freedom Tyler has given Zak to make his own choices, and the joy and confidences gives the young man. Because books on how to write scripts in 21 days dictate it, Tyler matures, Eleanor experiences the bigger and more real world, and Zak keeps being Zak because in the movies the mentally disabled are fertilizer to feed everyone else’s growth.
I mentioned a weak third act. That’s when the three travelers reach the home of Zak’s idol, a wrestler named the Salt-Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church) who has hit the skids. He closed the wrestling school ten years ago and now lives in a shithole trailer. Despite his low status, Redneck feels for Zak and gets out the old costume and shows the kid a few moves. That’s sweet. Could be funny. What isn’t is when he enlists Zak in a real wrestling match where the mentally-disabled young man faces a man who outweighs by a couple of hundred pounds and really likes beating the shit out of the handicapped. Somehow, Zak not only wins, but wins spectacularly, after which he, Tyler and Eleanor move to Florida to live happily ever after.
Corny horseshit. Too easy, based on too many contrivances and writer-directors Tyler Nielsen and Michael Schwartz believing too heavily that the audience wants a fairy-tale ending. It’s enough to nearly swamp any good feelings the movie has built. Nearly.
What saves Peanut Butter Falcon is mostly Gotsaggen, who is about as good an actor as could be, I suppose. But he’s really fucking likable, and clearly really into this. LaBeouf is very good too. Their friendship isn’t forced or fake. It isn’t patronizing, and their dialog is natural. They have some funny moments. It gets a little sappy once Johnson arrives, but until then it’s a damn good story of two guys floating down a waterway on a raft. I’m always a sucker for those.
Hollywood has a checkered history portraying the disabled. Movies like House of D or Riding the Bus With My Sister are made by smug pricks starring other smug pricks, all feeling really fucking good about themselves for showing us all how compassionate they are without ever actually having to be around real disabled people. Or, what about that kid Spongey, or Moppy or Corky from that TV show? Sure he actually had Down Syndrome, but holy shit was his character phony, cloying ass water. So, it’s really nice to see Zak, who comes across as very genuine, and in a movie and with a sidekick that mostly lets him be exactly that.
It’s just too damn bad Peanut Butter Falcon couldn’t leave it at that. They preach letting the kid spread his wings, and then they clip them with horseshit. Three Fingers.