Consider this another one of my It’s about time you weighted in with an opinion, old man! reports.


My wife and I watched Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket last night. To our amazement, it didn’t suck! In fact, it was really good. As is always the case with his films, the hip soundtrack almost drowned out the movie itself at times, but for once the action going on in the movie itself was worth watching. In contrast, years ago, when I suffered through the next two films he would make – you know which ones I mean – and some cool song came on to possibly put me out of my misery of watching a bunch of spoiled rich kids crying over the fact that their toy soldier collection was knocked out of place by the maid, I’d briefly dig the song I was hearing and then get more pissed that Anderson spent even more time shoving his toy soldier collection down my throat.

Bottle Rocket, unlike those next two films by Anderson, is simply funny and charmingly self-aware. There was a brief scene in which one of the Wilson brothers took time during a heist to rearrange a toy soldier that had been knocked out of place. Perfect! Part of the backstory was that Luke Wilson’s character had had a nervous breakdown. In his next two movies, Anderson would have harped on this, had Wilson sitting by his Close-and-Play, endlessly spinning a Leonard Cohen song. In Bottle Rocket, this fact is just a device to make the more handsome, serious, and less flexible (in acting terms) of the two Wilson brothers a little more credible regarding his choice of friends. But I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know. Surely I’m the last Townsperson to get around to seeing this film.