The Peanut Butter Falcon review – whimsical adventure is hard to resist

There’s an almost uncontrollable sense of whimsy running though this wholesome but tone-confused comedy-drama, loosely based on Mark Twain’s “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.” It’s a film that occasionally swims in similar waters as Matthew McConaughey’s Mud, and yet it’s also intercut with moments of such overt quirkiness it could make even the likes of Wes Anderson blush.

Because the minute The Peanut Butter Falcon begins, it feels like a film out of time. With its banjo-inclined musical score and its trying-way-too-hard-to-be-cute title, this one has Napoleon Dynamite-esque indie flick from the mid-2000s written all over it. And we haven’t even got to its fanciful plot yet, in which a young man with Down syndrome (Zack Gottsagen) escapes from a nursing home, teams up with a fisherman-turned-arsonist (Shia LaBeouf), boards a makeshift raft, and goes in search of a legendary wrestling school where he hopes to be trained by his idol.

Nobody ever wants to admit out loud that they legitimately like a movie called The Peanut Butter Falcon, and yet it’s almost frightening how quickly this film – directed by Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz in their feature debut – wins you over. The simple tale of two unlikely companions thrown into a series of amusing incidents is tried and tested, but here it’s working a different kind of magic that can’t be readily put into words. There is a version of this film that fails horribly. This isn’t it. It helps that, even as the film indulges its quirkier side, the chemistry shared by the film’s leads keeps you throughly invested.

Gottsagen, discovered by the film’s directors at a camp for disabled actors, is both hilariously self-aware and endearing as Zak, whilst Shia LaBeouf – as Tyler – hasn’t been this inherently likeable in a part for years. It’s a role that’s sure to bring him some added clout with mainstream audiences after so many far less commercial films. Dakota Johnson gets less to do as Zak’s carer, Eleanor, but manages to make the most of an unwritten role. Meanwhile, veterans Thomas Haden Church, John Hawkes, and Bruce Dern (in everything at the moment) turn up in affable – if somewhat brief – parts as a washed-up wrestling star, a gun-toting fisherman out for revenge, and an old man at a nursing home who helps Zak escape.

The flawless pacing, aided by a series of entertaining set-pieces that take place across a very wet and very beautifully photographed South Carolina, is only slightly undone by the suddenness of the ending – a result, perhaps, of the film writing itself into a dead end. Or maybe I’m just peeved that 98 minutes feels like way too short a time to hang out with these delightful, human characters.

★★★★☆

By: Tom Barnard

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This film was screened to the press as part of the BFI London Film Festival 2019. For more information and showtimes for this year’s festival, head to our dedicated page.