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Bottle Rocket (1996)

Bottle Rocket (1996)

Wes Anderson’s debut might lack the meticulous visual style he's synonymous with, but it's full of the charm and understated emotion we love him for

7.8

Movie

United States of America
English, Spanish
Comedy, Crime, Drama
1996
WES ANDERSON
Amanda Welles, Andrew Wilson, Antonia Bogdanovich
91 min

TLDR

Kudos to 27-year-old Wes Anderson for not letting it go to his head when Martin Scorsese named his debut feature one of the top ten films of the decade.

What it's about

After a voluntary stint in a mental hospital, aimless Anthony returns home to find his friend Dignan has roped him into an ambitious crime spree.

The take

Before he developed his signature dollhouse visual style, Wes Anderson made his feature debut with this lowkey, heartwarming, and decidedly not-symmetrically-perfect comedy about a bunch of misfits. Bottle Rocket isn’t as much of an outlier in its director’s storied filmography as might initially seem, however. Written in partnership with college buddy Owen Wilson — who, along with brothers Luke and Andrew, made his acting debut here — the film is delightfully offbeat and unexpectedly moving in the way we’ve come to expect from Anderson. 

Dignan (Owen Wilson) and Anthony (Luke Wilson) are two drifting, boyish twenty-somethings, although only Anthony seems aware of his directionlessness, as Dignan has graciously developed a 50-year life plan for the two of them (complete with hilariously vague bullet-points such as “Make wise investments” and “Own multiple accommodations”). The means to these ambitious ends is a life of crime — specifically, pulling off grand heists. But Dignan’s meticulousness hasn’t accounted for distractions, and his madcap scheme falls at the first hurdle when Anthony falls in love with a housekeeper at the motel they hide out in (Lumi Cavazos). Their sweet romance is one of the film’s many delights, as is its barrelling deadpan humor, which never betrays the warmth of the Wilson brothers’ heartwarming depiction of ride-or-die friendship.

What stands out

Along with spotlighting the preternatural directorial talents of a 27-year-old Anderson, Bottle Rocket is also a showcase for Owen and Luke Wilson (their brother Andrew featuring only slightly in the film). As the hopeless romantic Anthony, Luke is an instantly endearing leading man, although Owen is so unexpectedly charming as the harebrained Dignan he steals the film from under his brother. He’s never been funnier than as the deluded man-child Dignan, and he might not have ever given a performance with so much heart as he does here, either.

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