75. Bottle Rocket

Let’s be honest.  Who among us has never quietly dreamed about pulling off the perfect crime?  And who among us has never drafted a seventy-five year plan to enable that dream?

A few years before becoming indie darlings with Rushmore and The Royal Tenenbaums, director Wes Anderson and co-writer Owen Wilson created Bottle Rocket, a perfectly quaint art house caper comedy.  But it’s not really a caper flick at all - the heist elements seem almost secondary to the characters, who turn this into a Graduate-like exploration of twentysomething confusion and desperation.  These guys aren’t career criminals, even though one may dream of becoming one.  No, they’re just lost in the post-college haze of young adulthood, and robberies seem more appealing than a day job.

The genius of Bottle Rocket - or one of many, anyway - comes from Wilson’s performance as the wonderfully deluded and dangerously optimistic Dignan.  Determined to create a life of crime for himself and his friends, Dignan gleefully plows through plan after plan, no matter how useless the idea (the opening scene has him breaking his friend out of a voluntary hospital on the day of his release).  Wilson’s infectious performance carries the picture, getting us to hope along with him that maybe, just maybe, there is a real heist in his future.  And when the big heist finally arrives, it manages to go so horribly, comically awry, and yet to Dignan, he’s in heaven.

But again, this is not a movie about thievery.  No, most of the plot is taken up with long, easy meanderings, a laugh-heavy character study, as Dignan and best pals Anthony (Luke Wilson, also in pre-fame mode) and Bob (Robert Musgrave) “lay low” in an out-of-the-way motel following an ambitious (read: ludicrous) book store robbery.  It’s here that Anthony finds the simple pleasures, falling in love with a charming maid (the lovely Lumi Cavazos) despite a massive language gap.  Anthony, still looking for direction in life, finally finds his lost happiness, and this simple, sweet love story in the middle of a zany bumbling-crooks comedy shows us just what we have here: a desire on the filmmakers’ part to combine goofball silliness and emotional depth without showing a titl toward on or the other.  This desire would become the trademark of the Anderson/Wilson efforts to follow, movies that would win fans the world over for their gentle blend of insanity and humanity.

And while Bottle Rocket is not as focused as Rushmore and Tenenbaums, it is the most natural of the three.  There’s no apparent need on Anderson’s part to impress, to overload the quirky factor.  There’s just a simple little story about three lost souls sticking themselves in a world larger that they could ever really be.  To Anderson fans, this is just a sign of the greatness to come; to Bottle Rocket fans, this is the main course, a glorious indie effort that celebrates lost youth and ridiculous dreams, and with enormous laughs along the way. (David Cornelius)