REVIEWED - MILWAUKEE, MINNESOTA: We frequently accuse mainstream Hollywood of revelling in clichés, but few other films released this year have drawn so heavily on My Big Book of Stock Characters as this underwhelming indie drama. A Brave Fellow With Learning Difficulties (Troy Garity) finds himself in trouble when his Irascible Old Mom is killed in a car accident, Donald Clarke.
The unfortunate youth has, if you can believe this, accumulated a fortune winning ice fishing competitions - the differently-abled have a special connection with nature, you understand - and soon has to contend with the attentions of a Heartless Gold-digger (Alison Folland) and a Sleazy Con Artist (Randy Quaid). Fortunately an Elderly Loon (Bruce Dern), who was once close to the lad's Mom, is on hand to offer guidance.
The performances are all sound and the direction is competent after a flat, unimaginative fashion, but there really is something terribly familiar about the enterprise. Everybody ends up doing what the Big Book demands. The hero demonstrates that, as well as bestowing the power to charm fish, learning difficulties bring uncomplicated integrity. Gold-diggers, if they are pretty enough, will eventually see the error of their ways. And Sleazy Con Men, driven into recklessness by their own greed, will always come to sticky, sticky, ends.
Two footnotes for trainspotters: the lead, Troy Garity, is Jane Fonda's son, and Holly Woodlawn, who plays the Loud Middle-aged Transsexual, is the Holly mentioned in Lou Reed's Walk on the Wild Side.
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