A beautifully corny adventure.

Along the long, winding path of cinema history, it’s hard to find a genre that quite literally rides the line between success and failure as precariously as the road trip. Inspired by the classic adventure novel, tales of the road are as old as film itself, yet while they always have the potential to charm and inspire an audience, they can just as easily fall flat.

Rooted in a uniquely American ideology, at its best, the road trip movie can be a poignant celebration of adventure and personal discovery, however, at its worst, it’s tough to think of a genre as gratingly self-indulgent and schmaltzy. As an unabashed retelling of Mark Twain’s classic Adventures of Huckleberry Finn novel, complete with larger-than-life rogues, alluring Southern vistas, and a fervent sense of adventure, The Peanut Butter Falcon’s potential sits at a crossroads.

With dreams of becoming a professional wrestler, Zak (Zack Gottsagen), a young man with Downs syndrome, makes a break from his nursing home and heads out to meet his hero, The Salt Water Redneck (Thomas Haden Church). On the road and ill-prepared for its harsh realities, a twist of fate pairs Zak with Tyler (Shia LeBeouf), a small-time outlaw on the run, who reluctantly takes him under his wing. Together they sail, swim, and drink their way through North Carolina’s Outer Banks as they attempt to evade capture and rope Zak’s carer, Eleanor (Dakota Johnson), along for the ride. 

While it’s all too easy to look down on a film that so brazenly sets itself up to be ‘feel-good’, my word are we overdue a large slice of feeling good right now. Cinema was put on this Earth for a great many reasons, but escapism is high among them and The Peanut Butter Falcon offers a route to just that.

Wearing its Huckleberry Finn influences as a badge of honour, The Peanut Butter Falcon is escapism personified. As Zak and Tyler traverse the marshes and cornfields of North Carolina, we’re whisked away to a world that’s entrenched in reality, yet carries with it a fantastical sense of adventure full of backwater wrestling, homemade sail boats, moonshine, and nutty blind preachers.

Sweet and wholesome, almost to a fault, The Peanut Butter Falcon is a delightfully swampy daydream of a film that plucks its characters out of normality and throws them on a wild, life-changing adventure without a shred of cynicism. It’s a well-worn track the film travels down, with the risk of running into cliché at every turn, but its charms are utterly impossible to resist as it embraces all the conventions of the road trip playbook with infectious abandon.

With everyone logging some fairly hefty emotional baggage with them, The Peanut Butter Falcon openly embraces the darkness of its characters, yet never blocks the light from shining through. Every character caught up in the journey must shoulder their fair share of pain, however writer-directors Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz never linger on it, allowing their film to evolve into a ball of pure joy that never lets its emotional weight drag it down.

As it envelops you in its warm, Southern glow, The Peanut Butter Falcon hits just the right balance between light and dark to make for a refreshingly well-rounded viewing experience. Even as the film’s sticky sweetness threatens to send you into a sugar coma, Nilson and Schwartz’s script pulls back just enough to avoid overplaying it.

Tapping into a strong vein of Mark Twain-esque Americana, the film’s narrative introduces an extended cast of drifters, rogues, and eccentrics that flit in and out of the story like hitchhikers, building a charming and affecting world around our odd couple protagonists. Despite its dreamlike vibe, the world surrounding Zak and Tyler feels utterly lived-in, filled with a thick humidity and sea salt-filled air that you can practically taste.

Although there are twists and turns along the way, the film’s plot never really strays too far from the beaten track. There’s a very particular formula to this form of tall tale storytelling and The Peanut Butter Falcon is only too happy to stick to it, but while that certainly adds an air of familiarity to the narrative, it’s a testament to the writing that it never feels stale.

Infinitely charming and refreshingly simple, Nilson and Schwarz’s script comes chock full of familiar messages of life, living, and finding purpose in others, but despite it riding with its themes confidently, it never pushes things too far. The result is a simple but boldly told story that knows its setting and its roots intimately, while having the confidence to allow its characters the time and space to grow.

Bolstered by a wonderfully evocative bluegrass and gospel-infused score, the film is entrenched in its Southern setting, with cinematography that’s both dreamily soothing and so ramshackle it looks a wave lick away from collapsing. Working the same mystical charm that formed the backdrop to many an American adventure tale, The Peanut Butter Falcon has Southern soul running through its veins as its setting blooms into a crucial character all of its own.

Embedded within this locale are some of the most well-rounded characters you could hope to meet in such a tale. Never feeling the need to spoon-feed you character exposition, the film’s writing sprinkles in little details here and there along the journey, leaving it up to its stars to sell their own stories.

Boldly proving his doubters wrong, Shia LeBeouf turns in perhaps the finest performance of his career to show just what he’s capable of when given the right material. Redemption is the overriding theme for Tyler, with the parallels to LeBeouf’s own life hard to miss as he piles everything into a performance of subtlety and heart-breaking honesty.

Alongside him, Dakota Johnson appears to be travelling the same road to redemption as she proves herself more than capable beyond the world of Fifty Shades, yet it’s the young man beside her that proves to be The Peanut Butter Falcon’s shining light. 

Absolutely stealing the show from under the nose of his illustrious co-stars, Zack Gottsagen is a revelation in what is, astonishingly, his debut feature. Although undoubtedly raw, Gottsagen’s talent is undeniable as he injects pure joy and charisma into every scene, striking up an instant chemistry with LeBeouf that lifts the entire film from quirky road trip adventure to a different level entirely.

With a refreshingly honest approach and whip-smart comic timing, Gottsagen is the heart and soul of the entire film. It’s a credit to both his enormously charismatic performance and the high standard of the writing that his disability, while absolutely central to the plot, never feels overplayed, tokenistic, or worthy.

While The Peanut Butter Falcon occasionally falls into the kind of rose-tinted, feel-good trap that many disability-based films find themselves wandering into, the film’s heart is most certainly in the right place and, crucially, never shies away from who Zak is, his Downs syndrome, or the harsh realities of how others interact with him because of his differences.

Gottsagen’s charm, like the entire film, is absolutely impossible to resist. From the quirky title to the overtly wholesome setup, it’d be easy to look down on The Peanut Butter Falcon and dismiss it, yet Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz have come up with something rather special and worthy of everyone’s time. Warm, soulful, and with an admirably adventurous spirit, The Peanut Butter Falcon is an utter delight of a film and the ray of light we so desperately need in these dark times.