From the moment it starts, The Peanut Butter Falcon wins you over, with a delightful cold open portraying an escape attempt from an old people’s home, to limited success. Fortunately for the audience, the film keeps this level of vitality, humour and grit for the rest of its running time.

The Peanut Butter Falcon' brings North Carolina's charm and heart ...
credit

The Peanut Butter Falcon follows a 22-year-old with Down's Syndrome named Zak, who after successfully escaping the retirement home where he must reside (following the abandonment of his parents), ends up travelling with an on-the-run vagrant named Tyler. The two of them embark on a road trip down to Florida; on the way, fulfilling Zak’s lifelong dream of meeting his wrestling idol Salt Water Redneck. The conception of the film came from a chance meeting between the directors and writers (Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz) and lead actor Zack Gottsagen at a camp for the disabled, where he outlined his desire to become a movie star. From this, the film was born and what a film it is. This soaring roadtrip adventure has echoes of the great American Odysseys before it, in film and literature alike, but never placing in the shoes of the traveller a person with Down's Syndrome, leading to a highly original and life-affirming travel film that delights at every turn. 

The direction from the two brothers is never too flashy, but is also neither plain or dull. Stories like this have to hit certain beats, but when this film hits those beats that we have seen so many times before, they feel new and fresh again. Certain travel montages feel simultaneously documentary-like, whilst also being highly energetic and filmic. The film tiptoes this line very well throughout its run time and never falls either side, to become overly saccharine, fantastical or melodramatic. In fact the most possibly saccharine moments are dealt with so deftly that they achieve what the best heartfelt moments do, which is to make you smile and make your heart beat a little louder for just a moment, without passing a single thought about cinematic manipulation.

Performance-wise, the film is stacked with superb actors performing in lots of great roles. The film's three leads all do excellent work. Zack Gottsagen as Zak is the main standout, offering heart, humanity and an abundance of warmly felt humour. On a more pessimistic note, I will be intrigued to see Gottsagen in roles in films not entirely conceived and written for him. But I wait in great anticipation. Shia Labeouf strikes his greatest vein again, as the gruff, handyman role that I feel he is best in. We have seen this story before, but as we see Tyler grow to care for Zak over the course of the film, our hearts melt some more. However, the character never loses their truth and the crux of the film being Tyler’s escape from a criminal activity never comes to an unrealistic end. Dakota Johnson is on similarly sterling form as Eleanor. I have always felt that Johnson was a lot more than the sex object role she was tied into (pardon the pun) for the Fifty Shades trilogy. It’s roles like this, where her sexualised beauty isn’t her character's key focus point, where we get to see the true breadth of her acting talent. She pulls all the great aspects of her familial brood; the grit and charisma of her father, Don Johnson, the vulnerability and elegance of her grandmother, Tipp Hedren, and the loveable leading lady nature of her mother Melanie Griffith. A world with more Dakota Johnson performances will be a better one, cinematically speaking.
The Peanut Butter Falcon - Tyneside Cinema
credit

In the tradition of the great American Odyssey story, our three leads come across multiple characters of outlandish size, but all of which are performed with a realism that it brings it all down to the dirt. Bruce Dern is the first supporting character we meet, so wonderfully charming and caring as Carl. Jon Bernthal has a role with no lines as Tyler’s brother Mark, but follows Norma Desmond’s advice and says everything he wants with his eyes. As a matter of fact, it is these fleeting voiceless flashbacks that further highlight the wonderful restraint the filmmakers had with this film. John Hawkes offers a similarly silent villain as Duncan, whilst also adding to the humanity of the story by reminding us that Tyler “isn’t the only one hard up”. Everybody in this town seems to have fallen on hard times and Hawkes is the villainous embodiment of this strife in the film. Bruce Henderson (store clerk) and Wayne Dehart (Blind Jasper John) similarly offer caricaturish characters imbued with grit. The two standouts wait for us at the end of our trail, with Thomas Haden Church as Salt Water Redneck himself and real life ex-wrestler Jake “The Snake” Roberts. Where Church offers another caring soul on this journey with one of the highlight moments of the film as his old persona returns to greet Zak, Roberts however, offers a cruel slice of reality bringing the film back down into the dirt. Although this pattern of highs followed by a reality kick, could be seen as repetitive, it didn’t seem so during the film and more so felt clearer on retrospect.

I felt that perhaps the final ten minutes of the film felt slightly rushed and I would perhaps have liked these climatic moments to have each been given a little more time to breath and build to. However, as they were almost flights of fantasy in their nature, the speed at which they came was never at the front of my mind when watching them, more so an afterthought. One certain moment in the film’s climax gave me genuine goosebumps (I say this without a dash of overexaggeration or hyperbole).

-

A delightful 7/10, offering nothing but adventure, humour and heart aplenty. A great joy in such a simple film. An immediate recommendation for anybody who needs a shot of adventure or needs a film to make them smile.

P.S. Any amount of Bruce Dern is good, but teasing me with such a small role is like giving me a taste of honey. Maybe an entire movie based on his character could come next...I’d definitely watch it.

-Thomas Carruthers