Film Review – Paint

Bob Ross was a painter who hosted his own PBS show, “The Joy of Painting,” which aired for 11 years. He’s the “happy trees” guy, with his bushy hair and unnervingly peaceful on-air demeanor reaching a small but appreciative audience of art enthusiasts and students. Today, Ross is big business, with Bob Ross Inc. protective of his image, but happy to turn the man into a merchandise machine, keeping his spirit and moneymaking potential alive decades after his death. There’s no way the company is going to allow Hollywood to make a Bob Ross movie, leaving writer/director Brit McAdams to invent Carl Nargle, a bushy-haired, unnervingly peaceful character going through major emotional upheaval in “Paint,” which plays with Ross’s world of creativity while generating its own study of a man dedicated to his ego, failing to noticed the changing times. “Paint” does its own thing with the not-really-Bob-Ross experience, and McAdams mostly lands a mellow, periodically amusing character study with this subject, doing his best to avoid a thin parody of a public television legend. Read the rest at Blu-ray.com