The halfway point of Accidental Texan rather cleanly divides the film into two very different movies. Both are utterly cornball. Indeed, there is an appealing factor to just how thoroughly screenwriter Julie B. Denny (adapting a novel by Cole Thompson) commits to the cornball nature of each half of the movie, as well as that of the central friendship that develops. It doesn’t make the movie any better for its makers having committed to that cheesiness, mind you, but one can breathe the slightest sigh of relief. If ever there was a phenomenon of a movie having self-awareness about its own attempt at a dumb sort of charm, this one is an example of it. What begins as a story about a washed-up actor taking to the open road in shame eventually becomes a syrupy drama set in the world of oil men and the corrupt business dealings in which they barter.
In other words, director Mark Bristol’s movie barely makes any sense, and that comes into perfect view by the time Erwin Vandeveer (Rudy Pankow) finds himself stranded in the smallest of small towns in Texas. Before that, he’s an actor on the rise in New Orleans, until a ridiculous series of events (his cell phone improbably detonates some small pyrotechnics and ruins a take) leads to his being fired on the set of a movie and subsequently being dropped by his manager. Already, the movie’s sugary music score and the broadness of Pankow’s performance, which calibrates absolutely nothing about the funny dialogue or the sentimental silences, cue us into what we’re working with here.
That leads to Erwin’s self-imposed exile back to California, interrupted by car troubles. The only repairman in Buffalo Gap, Texas, doesn’t operate on Sundays, of course, but he’ll make an exception for Erwin at a premium. In need of money, Erwin agrees to a job of some sort under Merle (Thomas Haden Church), an oil driller whose business is on the cusp of several layers of bankruptcy, unless he can drill and find oil nearby. His competition on the market is already convincing an executive to back them, though, which inspires a truly nonsensical plan. Erwin, the actor, will play a successful land man who can convince those same men to drill where Merle, the drilling expert, tells them. The problem is obvious: Erwin knows nothing about this business.
Neither Pankow nor Church is able to do much with this inane material, which winds up also stranding a pair of other performers in the same conundrum. Carrie-Anne Moss, a fine actress with an eclectic résumé, plays a local barkeep who offers her assistance in showing Erwin around town, but this is mostly a nothing character, here to provide Merle a casual love interest. Bruce Dern, that great, grizzled character actor, also shows up as an old farmer who might be Merle and Erwin’s last chance for a stretch of land on which to grill, but nothing challenging or interesting is really asked of Dern in this role.
Eventually, yes, the scheme pays dividends in the finale, which bizarrely introduces gunfire into a low-stakes game with a golly-gee-howdy attitude. That seems unnecessary, as does the attempt to give Merle and Erwin a genuine rapport when, at best, the relationship is a transactional one. Tellingly, one can imagine Erwin will move on after the events of this movie, never to speak to or think upon Merle again. But that’s a natural reaction to the slight, flimsy drama of Accidental Texan. It barely inspires a shrug.
Photo courtesy of Roadside Attractions
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