642. Bottle Rocket (1996)

Starring: Owen Wilson, Luke Wilson, Ned Dowd

Director: Wes Anderson

Running Time: 91 mins

Bottle Rocket is an American film about a three friends who devise an extreme plan stretching 75 years into the future, all starting off with a seemingly simple robbery that leads them to go on the run.

For a Wes Anderson film, I was surprised by how normal it was. Obviously, in his directorial debut, he may not have found his classically quirky style, but I was a little disappointed by this film due to how plain it was, coupled with the fact that it was strangely unfunny.

However, I still found the whole thing quite fun to watch. The main two characters, played by Luke and Owen Wilson were both completely insane, and that added a lot more to the zanier aspect of the whole story. Also, the madness of the way that these guys were running off into the future from effectively nothing was also great fun to watch.

Despite that, I wasn’t laughing enough. Wes Anderson’s comedy isn’t famous for being laugh-out-loud hilarious, but in some of his better films, you can sustain quite a bit of laughter, however in this, I really struggled. There were no big gags or anything like that that would even make me chuckle, and that disappointed me a bit.

While I did find the concept of the story initially very entertaining and funny, it tires somewhat as it continues, as there seems to be very little development, while it also gets a bit more serious as there’s a romance chucked in there, which didn’t really add anything, and felt a little bit out of place amidst the atmosphere of the film.

In terms of Anderson’s directing, while still impressive, it wasn’t anything like the totally distinctive nature of his visuals, feeling genuinely very plain, and although I still think it’s an ambitious attempt on his directorial debut, it wasn’t interesting or individual enough to really excite me, so along with other reasons, that’s why this gets a 6.8.