PAINT (2023) – Worst movie of the year!
Rating: ⭐
Paint tells the story of Carl Nargle, a TV personality who has a huge fan base of viewers that follow his series where he paints something on screen while transporting the viewers’ imagination to a wonderous place as he verbally illuminates the scene he is painting. It is hard to imagine or be convinced that people can be so engaged and addicted to such an act. Apparently, the character of Carl Nargle is based on a real life TV painter Bob Ross who hosted a popular instructional television program that aired from 1983 to 1994 on PBS! The film makers even mischievously made Carl look like Bob with his afro hairstyle and dressing. But make no mistake about it, there is absolutely no resemblance at all to the real Bob Ross as this is not a biopic of him.
As played by Owen Wilson, Carl Nargle comes across as someone very annoying and unbelievable. It comes across like a parody but unfunny. All the characters are equally annoying and behave illogically. I can understand if all this is to draw laughs from the audience but as I said, it is all very ,, unfunny. The story also flip and flop between 20 years or so of the characters’ lives but you will have difficulty following this as there was little attempt to make the actors’ age look any differently in these scenes. It was also confusing to tell the period in which the story takes place because the sets, costumes, and props all look far too dated to reflect the period of 1990’s. I am not sure or care, whether this was deliberately done by the film makers as some sort of artistic hidden message. All I got out of it was a headache.
Overall this movie is one big mess and I would strongly not recommend it. It is strange to make a movie that has the main character be based on someone real and ridicule his work and life. I am far more curious to know about the real Bob Ross and how he became such a popular TV personality doing what most people would deem as boring stuff. Paint is the worst movie I have seen in a long time and it is, in my opinion, probably Owen Wilson’s worst performance in his career. This is one movie that is best left forgotten.