Film review: Bottle Rocket (1996)

I've always thought of this as Wes Anderson's most charming, least mannered (because it was his first) film.  It's the one that introduced the Wilson brothers (Luke and Owen) to the world.  I saw that it was about to leave the Criterion Channel at the end of the month, so I persuaded Jami to rewatch it, and as so often happens these days, I found there was a lot I'd forgotten about it.  The basic plot is that Owen Wilson (with short hair for the only time ever in a film) plays Dignan, who is a great character and something of his own archetype, who persuades his friend Anthony (Luke) and Bob to try robbery.  They succeed in robbing a bookstore (disguised, for no good reason, with anti-snore strips across their noses) and go on the lam.  They "hide out" at a motel in the middle of Texas (where the whole movie is set, because that's where Anderson and the Wilsons are from) where Anthony falls for one of the girls who cleans the rooms, a non-English speaker from Paraguay called Inez.  But Bob gets panicky because he gets word that "Future Man," his bullying older brother (played by a third Wilson brother, Andrew) has been arrested because of the marijuana plants that he (Bob) was growing in their front year.  (Bob and Future Man are the spawn of incredibly rich parents and have the run of their house because the parents are perpetually abroad.)  So Bob (whose car they've been using) sneaks off in the night leaving Dignan and Anthony behind.  Anthony is sympathetic (and wouldn't mind being stranded with Inez), but Dignan is furious, and insists that they steal a car and go back.  Anthony wants Inez to come along, but she (communicating through a young dishwasher called Rocky) makes it clear that she is leery of Anthony's rootless ways.  But on the morning they are to leave, Anthony gets Dignan to give Inez an envelope and Inez tries to send a message ("I love you") to Anthony via Rocky via Dignan, but Dignan thinks that Rocky is trying to tell Anthony that he loves him.  The car they steal breaks down (they steal it from a mechanic's, so it probably had problems) and Dignan and Anthony fight and go their separate ways.  Cut to months later and we see Anthony and Bob teamed up again working a variety of odd jobs in an attempt to earn enough to pay off Future Man's legal bills.  But then Dignan shows up again, apologizes, and tries to recruit Anthony to join him with "Mr Henry" (who runs a landscaping business from which Dignan got fired before the point we came in in the movie, but also a burgling business on the side).  Mr. Henry is played by James Caan, in a great turn (that he says took three days to shoot - "about as long as appearing in an episode of Hollywood Squares"), that is both funny and very sinister.  Everything builds to an attempted heist of a refrigeration company, where our three heroes are part of a jump-suited gang along with an old driver called Applejack and an old (totally inept, as it transpires) safecracker called Kumar, and everything goes wrong.  People show up who should be at lunch, Bob's walkie-talkie breaks, Kumar has a crisis of confidence, the fire alarm goes off and Applejack has a heart attack (or does he?)  Meanwhile, Mr Henry is emptying everything out of Bob's parents' house (including their grand piano) which was his plan all along.  Dignan is the only one who gets caught, though, because he goes back for Applejack, and goes down for 2 years.  But he is proud of their attempted robbery nonetheless, and seems quite cheerful when Bob and Anthony visit him in prison.  And Anthony worked out the misunderstanding with Inez and they patch things up.  Bittersweet.  I still like it, although I now find it more poignant than outright funny, even though it's peppered throughout with jokes provided by Simpsons producer James L. Brooks, who believed in this project even though the people behind it were a bunch of kids from the middle of nowhere, and even when everybody hated it in test screenings.  Doesn't hurt that it has a great soundtrack.