4 stars out of 5
Walking out of the Clairidge theater, I turned to my pal the ticket clerk and said, “I really need to mix in an upbeat film now and then.” Omaha was my second consecutive real downer at the movies. Which is not to say I didn’t like it – quite the contrary.
As the movie begins, we’re in Utah, not Omaha, in the very early morning in the recent past. Dad is waking up his two sleepy kids and rushing them out of the house and, with the dog, into the beat-up car. Something bad has happened that they are running away from. One of the beautiful things about this movie is that we rarely know any more than the kids do. Mom has passed away, and we are driving to – Dad eventually tells us – Nebraska.
Who or what is in Nebraska? Dad won’t say.
Very good actor John Magaro is the dad. You may know him as the white guy in Past Lives or the human in First Cow or as Silvio in The Many Saints of Newark or as the loyal buddy in The Mastermind or as a crewman in Finest Hour. He has a bearded down-to-earth everyman quality that suits him very well in this role. There is not a ton of dialogue in the script so body language and facial expressions do much of the heavy lifting here, and Magaro is more than up to the challenge. He is depressed and defeated and exhausted and in one heartbreaking scene has taken all that he can take, yet he wants to remain a loving, devoted father.
As the older of the two kids, Molly Belle Wright is splendid. All I ask of kid actors is to be believable rather than actorly and Molly has it. Her character is trying so hard to be mature but it’s hard because she’s a little kid.
Emotions ratchet up a notch as the family reaches their destination. I’ll say no more. Is that latest Spongebob flick streaming yet? I gotta lighten things up.
being underrated is overrated
Jack Silbert, curator