The Peanut Butter Falcon review- a sentimental summer watch

As a form of escapism, films appeal to the missing gaps in our lives. You might switch on Taken after a particularly mundane week at work, When Harry Met Sally during a romantic-dry spot, or The Notebook when you need a good cry but can’t quite conjure up anything tragic enough from your own life.

That might explain why then, since Lockdown, my Netflix has been vehemently locked on the ‘Feel Good’ category.

This week I struck Netflix gold. The Peanut Butter Falcon came out in 2019 and was a film I had heard whispers about (it scooped up 21 wins at independent film festivals) but had never taken the time to watch.

The film, starring child-star-turned-bad-turned-good Shia LaBeouf, follows a 22-year-old run away with Down syndrome Zach (played by the excellent Zach Gottsagen) who befriends a small-time outlaw called Tyler (LaBeouf). The two begin an unlikely companionship as they travel across the North Carolina Outer Banks in search of Zak’s (Gottsagen) dream wrestling school.

If the plot seems familiar, it is because it is a modern retelling of Mark Twain’s Huckleberry Finn. Published in 1884, Adventures of Huckleberry Finn tell the story of a young boy’s escape from an alcoholic father and an adventurous journey down the Mississippi with a runaway slave named Jim.

At the core of the film’s excellence is the character of Zak, written specifically for the young actor after the writer-directors (Tyler Nilson and Mike Schwartz) met Gottsagen, who has Down syndrome himself, at a camp for actors with disabilities. Peanut Butter Falcon was awarded the Ruderman Family Foundation Seal of Authentic Representation for its portrayal of Down syndrome. 

Gottsagen plays Zak with an enchanting charisma, playing on the intersection of his naivety and wisdom. As a young boy made to live in a nursing home due to his disability, Zak is the opposite of streetwise and finds himself being bullied by a group of children not long after his escape. Yet, Zak also has an earnestly candid worldview that allows him to see through Tyler’s tough exterior and force him to confront the deflective narrative he has shaped for himself to distract from the guilt he feels after his brothers’ death.

Through his new-found companion in Zak, Tyler meets Eleanor (Dakota Fanning), Zak’s favourite nurse, who is desperately trying to track him down after he escaped from the nursing home. The romance between Zak and Eleanor is funny and sweet, but entirely eclipsed by Zak and Tyler’s friendship; this is a buddy-movie, not a romantic drama. The relationship between the two men even seeped through the acting and into their real lives. During filming for The Peanut Butter Falcon LaBeouf was arrested for drunken misconduct. When filming resumed Gottsagen urged his co-star to get his act together and promise to avoid alcohol until the end of filming; LaBeouf later said Gottsagen’s friendship saved him.

 When the film isn’t tugging on your heartstrings it is indulging the senses with sweeping landscape shots of a side to America I have not often seen depicted on screen. The deep green fauna of the luscious North Caroline Outer Banks is depicted in such evocative colours you can almost smell the musky marshes and feel the dusty heat. It is the setting of a true adventure; from empty railway roads surrounded by endless empty land to paradisial beaches, it is 97 minutes of wanderlust.

The film comes to an abrupt ending. The kind of ending that leaves you skipping back over the last five minutes to give it the proper attention it deserved, knowing that a joyful watching-experience is coming to an end. It leaves you wanting more, but in the words of Orson Welles, “If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story.” I for one will be taking a happy ending wherever I can get it for the rest of this year.