That said, Billy Bob Thornton does a terrific job as Karl Childers, who is not a smart man in the same way that Forrest Gump wasn't. Karl is a retarded man who, as a child, killed his mother and her lover when he found them together. He's spent the past 25 years of his life in the state hospital, but at the start of the movie, he is released into a world where he has no connections and no one to take care of him. Returning to his home town, he meets a young boy, Frank, and the two instantly connect. He moves in with Frank, the boy's mother, and her boyfriend, Doyle (Dwight Yoakam, who reveals why he always wears a cowboy hat -- not for Nashville street cred, but because his hairline's retreating faster than a redneck in a roomful of Bryn Mawr women). Doyle's abusive, Karl identifies with the young boy... three guesses as to what happens eventually.
Billy Bob Thornton, best known up to now for writing and starring in (along with Bill Paxton) the superb One False Move -- I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it -- certainly deserves his Best Actor nomination. Although Karl has his defining tics -- scrunched-up face, gravelly voice, peculiar rumbles -- Thornton lets you see a little something behind the mask. Karl has a lot more on the ball than he's given credit for; he just doesn't always have the social graces to express his feelings properly.
The other actors are all good, too -- Yoakam surprisingly so as the brutal Doyle, although he makes him such a monster that it's hard to understand why Frank's mother stays with him. John Ritter has a nice turn -- and a terrible haircut -- as Vaughn, the gay best friend of Frank's mother who sees the similarities between his position and Karl's. And Robert Duvall has an inarticulate and totally pointless cameo as Karl's father.
Which brings me to one of my main complaints -- Thornton seems to be out to make an un-Hollywood movie, but he can't resist throwing in tired old Hollywood clichés that clunk as serious missteps, like M. Pied-Lourd at the ballet (that's just a little Kids in the Hall reference, for those of you going "Huh?"). One of these is the scene between Karl and his father; another is a sort of romance between Karl and a "slow" woman who works with Frank's mother and Vaughn. Both scenes come out of nowhere and sink out of sight just as fast, and they feel pointless, break up the already slow pace of the film, and seem like they come from a studio executive's suggestion ("Let's have Karl confront his father! Let's have Karl fall in love!").
To sum up, I liked it, but it was too slow and not engaging
enough for
me to put it on the year's best list. Let's give it 3 out of 5
stars.
And if the Best Actor Oscar has to go to a Rain Man this year, I'd
rather
see it go to Billy Bob Thornton than Geoffrey Rush.
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