Southern Nice (Film Thoughts: The Peanut Butter Falcon)

pbfTyler Nilson and Mark Schwartz’s ‘the Peanut Butter Falcon’ is earning raves from critics. At the screening I attended, the audience burst out in applause when the credits started to roll. But I hate to say this, but all I felt saying was “it was nice.” It’s earnest, it means well, and it is certainly a crowd pleaser, but I found myself not connecting deeply with the film or any of its characters. Its genteel Southern charm is a tad too sleepy for my taste, and I found myself getting bored a couple of times. Plus,  it is not lacking from good performances. The center character, Zak, is played by Zack Gottsagen, and I bet the real life actor has a lot of similarities with the character (I read that the filmmakers wrote the script specifically for him) Plus, I had forgotten how Shia LaBeouf is such a natural and charismatic actor (Dakota Johnson, too, for that matter)  To be honest, I kind of feel bad that I don’t love this as much as everyone else, but really, the heart loves what it loves.

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