Downtown Owl (2023) User Reviews (8)

mixed bag

[seven-johnson · 5/10 · 26 April 2024]

Lily Rabe is excellent, more than capable of holding her own as a lead and nice understated comedic performance. She's not the problem with the film.

It definitely feels like the Directors first attempt at a feature, there's a fair amount of moments in here where you think "that could have been better". The semi-realist, wandering lens moments are particularly clumsily done and feel anachronistic - certainly could have been done in that style, it just seems as if the director had a "that'll do" attitude and a checklist of cultural beats to hit.

Which leads me to the soundtrack, trust-fund bands doing covers of songs that would be pertinent to the film if the originals were used, but they were - so you just get the sacharine "new" version with the rough edges sanded to a cookie-cutter banality. Particularly egregious was the opening track, the worst cover of "Pump it up" ever - not a great intro and put me in the mindset of instant dislike.

Again, Lily Rabe does all the heavy lifting here, this could have been an 8/10 film if the director did it again.

quirky

[SnoopyStyle · 6/10 · 3 May 2024]

It's 1983. New teacher Julia Rabia (Lily Rabe) arrives in the tiny town of Owl, North Dakota. She is befriended by talkative fellow teacher Naomi (Vanessa Hudgens) who brings her to the local bar. She falls for bison farmer Vance Druid (Henry Golding). She is befriended by longtime resident Horace Jones (Ed Harris). There is an inappropriate teacher-student relationship and a surprise snowstorm.

I really like Lily Rabe. More and more, she reminds me of her mother. They have the same style and comedic tones. I like almost everybody here although a couple of them are trying too hard. It's quirky middle America. The story is too scattered. The main plot should be the underaged student affair. Julia should have more time with the quarterback and get more involved with that subplot. As for the snowstorm, it seems rather anti-climatic and a bit of a fake-out. I like this cast but the story needs work.

Two words: hot mess

[carline23 · 1/10 · 27 April 2024]

I wanted like this film, I really did. But there is something to be said for, "just because you can, doesn't mean you should" here, all the way around.

Age swapping Julia and Naomi in order to allow Lily Rabe to star and "showcase her acting" was not wise. Most of her scenes I found completely over the top, the breakdown on the football field was not a "career best", it was straight up embarrassing. Julia was in her 20s in the book, fresh out of college with no where else to go, and that setup works so much better than the concept of a 40-year-old woman moving across country to a tiny town for a single semester because her husband is working on his thesis?!

So much of the story felt incomplete, and yet somehow managed to be so boring at the same time. 41 minutes in and I paused the film to see how much time was left and then groaned to discover there was a lot more to go. Too many characters were thrown in for inclusions sake because they were in the book, like Naomi's faux "boyfriend" Ted, who really had zero purpose except to tell her at the end that she's not a good listener. Justice for Ted, he deserved better. The high school kids were the best part of the movie, and they were all so underdeveloped. Why bother creating these secondary characters for little to no reason?

I have so many questions about the directors' choices on what to add/subtract from the original plot. Why was the coach having a torrid affair with a student made such a central point and how is it realistic that the whole town just accepts that he does this repeatedly? It amounts to absolutely nothing. No resolution, no Laidlaw getting his. And Julia proclaiming, "but what if she really loves him?!" Yikes.

All the criticisms I've read from professionals are spot on. The tone is all over the place, weird 4th wall breaks that do not work, cartoons and hot pink type thrown in, and no, the directors claiming they just "like weird" and the rest of us "don't get it", is not a valid reason. The entire blizzard scene, the climax of the film: dramatic music, weird monologuing and ultimately changing the original ending...was it supposed to be so bad it was silly?! I honestly could not tell. "I'm saving your life, man!" Cringe.

These two should really just focus on their own acting careers rather than keep trying to force this 2fer to happen. It never goes well. As someone on letterboxd said, no one self-sabotages their career better than Lily Rabe and subsequently, Hamish Linklater's.

Pointless and Stupid

[mfjtownsend · 1/10 · 26 April 2024]

If you're going to have the storm of the century don't show characters walking in the snow afterwards when it doesn't even come up to the bottom of their boots. Just one example of the pointless stupidity of this movie. Another is a football team in the locker room with about five players. It goes on and on.

Hardly anyone in the movie seems remotely real. And despite their efforts you would have a hard time caring about what happens to any of them. At the end of the movie when the newspaper shows that one of them dies, you will probably go, "Huh, who cares," and go directly to IMDB to give it a poor review.

*heavy sigh* I had hopes. I really did.

[booksmurff811 · 2/10 · 30 April 2024]

I don't know where to start.

I read this book years ago, and it was okay. Not great, but not boring. Easy read, fast. Probably read it in a day. This movie feels like it tried to shove those hours of reading into five minutes.

The pace was hurried. It didn't align with the book. I was put off immediately by a middle-aged teacher moving to the middle of nowhere to teach for a SINGLE SEMESTER while her husband worked on his doctorate? And what's going on with her husband? Why did we need to see their marriage fray in this? Oh wait, we didn't need the marriage at all - if the story would've stuck to the book!

Julia in the book is 23, single, and a recent college grad trying to get her footing with her first full-time teaching job? That makes sense. Naomi enters the book a little older, wiser, and a bit more grizzled, ready to show Julia the ropes of life in this small hamlet. Single Julia trying to meet an equally single Vance - well, there we go.

No crying/screaming divorce phone calls needed. Not a single one.

Ted - what happened to Ted? Ted in the book isn't a major character, but he's the reasonable, level-headed guy who takes care of his friends in the book. He gets a whole single line in the movie.

But Laidlaw, well, I don't even wanna go there. Laidlaw in the book is just a gross, dispicable man whose life didn't get upended by pregnancy like his poor student, Tina - who is long gone in the book. But here we are, focusing on this EXTREMLY problematic relationship, to which one character remarks, "Maybe it's love."

STOP.

The story, as a whole, got bungled. This would make a much better three-act play. In the book, none of the characters overlap, which makes it better. We just get little microscopes into these three different lives and the people around them. It's perfect. But in this movie, everyone overlaps. The kids try to get Julia in to stop Laidlaw -- what?! Horace drags Julia in to stare at his comatose wife (who doesn't exist in the book). What? And for goodness sake WHAT was that scream session on the football field about?!

What is with the fish eye lenses for panning shots that went nowhere?

Why did they keep breaking the fourth wall? If you want to narrate, just narrate the damn thing. The storm tips at the end felt comical for an ending that's supposed to be tragic.

*takes a heavy breath, sighs*

I just didn't like this movie. Not a lot, and not even a little. I think Ed Harris carried his character the best. Henry as Vance was good too, but we didn't get enough of him. I liked the Mitch + friend group the most but they got next to no time other than stalking Laidlaw.

The soundtrack had some good jams, but didn't feel very 80s - which has such a vibe with music on its own, it could've really pulled us into this world a bit more.

This book maybe never should've been a movie. Or at most, a play. But here we are.

Quirky, original, enjoyable 1983-based small-town dramedy

[danieljfarthing · 7/10 · 24 April 2024]

In quirky but enjoyable 1983-based small-town dramedy "Downtown Owl" Lily Rabe (terrific) escapes her troubled marriage by taking a short-term teaching assignment (under Hamish Linklater) in the titular tiny Dakota town where she goes thru something of a drink fuelled breakdown while interacting with local characters like Ed Harris (still a class act), love interest (or not?) Henry Golding, and colleagues Vanessa Hudgens & Finn Wittrock. Linklater (on his movie writing debut) adapted the screenplay from Chuck Klosterman's novel, and also co-directed with actual gf (and fellow first-time director) Rabe - props to both of them for such an original & likeable film.

Lousy Teacher

[taurushulk · 1/10 · 25 April 2024]

Quite boring waste of time and money at triple speed to watch, short-sighted, trivial, tasteless, lengthy and boring, mysterious and illogical, can't stand it anymore, maitre ridiculous, not a movie, just a documentary, worse than documentary, meaningless argument, inflexible, stiff, fallen, long winded, nagging, naomi moron julia lunatic, totally nonsense, unconscious, moaning for no reason, said reality but not related, depth but not depth, obviously another commercial that been sponsored by lunatic tobacco company, do nothing just smoking only, if don't know how to make a film, just donate money to people.

I believe this movie deserves better than the current rating!

[diane_berger · 10/10 · 23 April 2024]

I didn't come to this movie with much expectations, since for the time being there aren't that many features that really manage to impress me, but I was taken by surprise... The cast was somewhat stellar (Lily Rabe, Vanessa Hudgens and last, but not least, Ed Harris)... But still I had my doubts... Nonetheless I kept watching it and I did get a good surprise.

Directorial debut for Lily Rabe, I cannot but congratulate her for it!

There are a lot of average movies around ("Late Night with the Devil" is just an example of how you can waste some time), but this one is a surprisingly good one.

I was just sorry it wasn't any longer.

Give it a try and I believe you won't be disappointed!