Bottle Rocket

Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket is a funny, affectionate crime comedy, though its leisurely episodes occasionally try our patience. Written by Anderson and Owen Wilson, it follows three friends whose criminal ambitions depend on taking Dignan’s plans far more seriously than those plans deserve. The pleasure is in watching the others accommodate him, with all the small negotiations that friendship requires. Anderson gives their wish to be criminals enough attention for us to understand why abandoning it might feel like letting one another down.

Owen Wilson plays Dignan with a busy, hopeful intensity that makes his certainty funny without making him contemptible. He seems to need his friends to believe in the scheme almost as much as he needs to believe in it himself. We laughed at the bookstore robbery, then felt unexpectedly protective of the men attempting it. Wilson’s earnestness makes their incompetence embarrassing in a recognisable way: they have committed themselves to something they plainly cannot manage.

Luke Wilson’s Anthony Adams supplies a quieter response to all that purpose, and the two actors make the friendship plausible without insisting on its importance. Robert Musgrave’s Bob Mapplethorpe completes a trio whose uneven levels of enthusiasm keep the exchanges alive. The script is less generous to Bob, who remains a little sketchy beside his companions. Musgrave’s amiability helps, but we wanted a stronger sense of what keeps him attached to this particular friendship.

Robert D. Yeoman’s cinematography leaves plenty of sky around these men, a spare approach that keeps their schemes looking agreeably small. It also gives the actors room to be funny without every image demanding a separate laugh. David Wasco’s production design makes the bookstore and motel feel ordinary enough for the criminal fantasies to seem faintly misplaced. Those settings work because they do not announce that eccentric people are about to occupy them; the cast can establish that unaided.

David Moritz’s editing allows the motel stretch to settle into an unhurried rhythm, and some of the film’s gentlest humour benefits from the pause. There is a limit to how much amiable drifting the story can support, however, and the episodes do not all earn equal attention. Mark Mothersbaugh’s score lends movement to scenes that the editing allows to linger. It is a useful contribution, although music cannot quite make another pause in the action feel necessary.

The usual pleasures of a heist comedy include watching a complicated plan work, or fail in neatly timed stages. Anderson is content to let the friendships supply much of the suspense, and that puts a fair demand on the cast. Owen Wilson repays it: Dignan’s faith in himself remains touching even when we wish somebody would interrupt him. Choose it for an evening when a dry joke and a fragile friendship are enough to hold your attention.