Review: ‘Paint’ has a brush with greatness by mixing colorful comedy, heart and Owen Wilson

The soft-shell masculinity Owen Wilson sells so well gets a solid workout in the goofball charmer “Paint,” about a beloved PBS art show personality sporting a nimbus of sensitive curls, the denim magnetism of a troubadour, and a healthy belief in his staying power.

Writer-director Brit McAdams’ debut feature takes the readily spoofable Bob Ross-ian allure of a honey-voiced, majestically permed instructor seducing viewers with his therapeutic landscapes, and gives it a gentle nudge into “Anchorman” territory. Not in the kind of over-the-top breakdowns Will Ferrell made into outrageously funny set pieces, but more the comically rich scenario of an overly confident man coming to grips with a changing world, and his own unaddressed insecurities.

With his pipe, paintbrush and you-can-do-it platitudes, Wilson’s whisper-voiced Carl Nargle is Burlington, Vermont’s big fish in a small — but picturesque — pond, turning cozy colors, calming vibes, and nature scenes into hypnotic daytime television for his followers, a demographic neatly summed up in reaction montages as eager hobbyists, enraptured seniors and lonely barflies. There’s also, based on the swooning attention he gets off-camera, plenty of smitten women ready to be invited into his customized van for a more personal kind of brushstroke. (The crack trio of Lusia Strus, Wendi McLendon-Covey and Lucy Freyer provides many choicely funny moments in this category of team player.)

‘Paint’ already made Bob Ross fans mad. For his brand, it’s a happy little accident

Less impressed with Carl these days, however, is his nervous station manager Tony (Stephen Root), struggling to counter faltering ratings, and his producer and ex-girlfriend Katherine (Michaela Watkins), the underappreciated partner behind his two decades of broadcast success, ready to leave Carl and Burlington behind. But not before, as a parting shot to help the station — and maybe deliberately rattle Carl — she hires a lively young female artist named Ambrosia (Ciara Renée) to host her own painting show right after his.

When Ambrosia’s popularity and talent — even her seduction skills — begin to eclipse Carl’s, however, it sends the old lion into a self-absorbed tailspin, exposing not only the well-upholstered chauvinism undergirding his easy-breezy appeal (the kind that sees opening the door for women as the height of respect) but also a nagging self-doubt about his worth as an artist.

Had “Paint” settled for a litany of jokes involving chowder bread bowls, CB radios and public television culture, its snickery zing would have probably played like little more than a drawn-out sketch. But McAdams finds enough heart and intelligence in the themes of personal expression and equitable opportunity animating his comedy to spur a rounder laugh from the more absurd elements, and a chance for the rock-solid cast to not seem like merely figures in a funhouse. Even the nostalgic needle drops on the adult contemporary-infused soundtrack (including Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind” and Dolly Parton’s “Coat of Many Colors”) occasionally tip toward a curious emotional resonance once they get their due as a spark-of-recognition chuckle.

This movie’s most identifiable musicality, of course, is Wilson’s patented lo-fi lilt, which McAdams treats like a comedy orchestra’s first chair, able to soothe with hilarious self-assurance one minute and be just as funny betraying confused and stupid hurt the next. Faced with a bolting girlfriend’s declaration that her Uber is here, he can make “I don’t know what that is” sound like a mini-epic of pity-me victimhood.

Carl is a great middle-aged role for the eccentric star’s well-seasoned gifts. And while Watkins has countless times proved her oddball bona fides in comedies, a more straight-ahead, reactive role like Katherine reminds us that she fits in anywhere — in this case, adding the right shades of melancholy and deadpan frustration to the movie’s canvas of quirk. “Paint” may ultimately be just modestly amusing, but at least it understands that a palette of well-blended tones has a better chance of earning our laughs than the one-color-fits-all kind.