New Mexico has for the last hundred years drawn some of the most disparate and dysfunctional characters seeking to find themselves in the beauty of the landscape. All sympathy for the poor natives who must put up with these seekers of senselessness which is the basis of the film, Off The Map. Directed by the superb actor, Campbell Scott, this is the summer story of Bo, an 11 year old home-schooled, precocious, only child, her half-Hopi mother Arlene (Joan Allen as a Hopi???), her depressed dad, Charley (Sam Elliott), IRS agent, William Gibbs (William True-Frost), and George, her god father, all who surround the child with an alternative fantasy of cleaned up 70s hippie feel-good lifestyles sans drugs, that is somewhat Utopian and revisionist.
Moving like a stilted play moved out to the Taos landscape, this coming of age/lost in paradise episodic 3-act story has elements of theatre of the absurd mixed with All In The Family silliness couched in the ideas of back to the earth ideologies. When an IRS agent audits the family, he finds they don't live on cash but barter for everything and live in cast off clothing. Yet through some overt identity theft, the ever-annoying Bo steals sufficient information from the adults to qualify for a Master Charge card which allows her to purchase a sailboat delivered from San Diego in time to surprise her father for his birthday, and placing the family in further debt to the tune of over $4,000. No one seems to worry about the money, or lack of social skills the kid presents, or the fact that a federal employee has gone missing in the New Mexico countryside on per diem? Its all swept under the Navajo rugs in the name of picturesque alterity.
I'm sure this small indie film is meant to make for feel good family entertainment, however, on screen, it comes off just plain boring despite the fine cast. Watch for the landscape, and rambling ode to alternative family setting, but as entertainment, it was far from satisfying or noteworthy.
Moving like a stilted play moved out to the Taos landscape, this coming of age/lost in paradise episodic 3-act story has elements of theatre of the absurd mixed with All In The Family silliness couched in the ideas of back to the earth ideologies. When an IRS agent audits the family, he finds they don't live on cash but barter for everything and live in cast off clothing. Yet through some overt identity theft, the ever-annoying Bo steals sufficient information from the adults to qualify for a Master Charge card which allows her to purchase a sailboat delivered from San Diego in time to surprise her father for his birthday, and placing the family in further debt to the tune of over $4,000. No one seems to worry about the money, or lack of social skills the kid presents, or the fact that a federal employee has gone missing in the New Mexico countryside on per diem? Its all swept under the Navajo rugs in the name of picturesque alterity.
I'm sure this small indie film is meant to make for feel good family entertainment, however, on screen, it comes off just plain boring despite the fine cast. Watch for the landscape, and rambling ode to alternative family setting, but as entertainment, it was far from satisfying or noteworthy.