Oh Josh Lucas. Every time I looked up at the screen into your earnest blue eyes, I wanted so badly to like this movie.
By Lisa Timmons

Oh Josh Lucas. Every time I looked up at the screen into your earnest blue eyes, I wanted so badly to like this movie. But, somehow, your subtly disguised Southern accent and striking resemblance to a young Paul Newman weren’t enough for me. Perhaps if you would have decided to disrobe for any reason—or at least had some scene, which required you to chop wood while shirtless—I would have been able in good conscience to recommend this movie with conviction.

In “Around the Bend,” Josh Lucas plays Jason Lair, the third generation of Lair men, in this story about how the death of their patriarch, Henry (Michael Caine), forces his estranged son, Turner (Christopher Walken) to make peace with his son and grandson.

OK, my first problem with this situation is the following: Christopher Walken is supposed to be the son of Michael Caine. Dude, Walken actually looks older. Nobody looks related, which wouldn’t have been so distracting, if the four different Lair men had anything in common. But they don’t! You are never able to suspend belief that all four of these individuals are actors. Nothing seems to unite these people except for odd casting.

So then the story gets rolling and you realize that not only is everybody miscast, you’re also supposed to believe some hokey, sit-com-like storyline, which has the three surviving Lairs following a completely contrived stipulation in Henry’s will, which requires them to eat exclusively at Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants on a road trip filled with male-bonding. I don’t know when, where or how the writer/director of “Around the Bend” sold his soul to KFC in order to get his movie made, but this was certainly the longest, most expensive infomercial I’ve ever seen in my life.

Christopher Walken’s talents were completely squandered in this film. You get the feeling he’s never really able to sink his teeth into the character of Turner, who can’t seem to decide if he’s going to be a one-dimensional eccentric creation of Walken’s, or if he indeed is a deeper soul. What you end up with is pretty boring. Walken’s nighttime dance in the desert, illuminated only by the headlights of a van hearkens back to his joyfully deadpan performance in Spike Jonze’s video for Fatboy Slim. However, even that moment feels contrived—as if trying to recapture the feeling of spontaneity from the video, but not quite succeeding.On top of that, Michael Caine’s character is supposed to be the eccentric one. Um, yeah.

Josh Lucas just kind of exists. Like an innocuous pair of khaki pants, he neither offends nor impassions—he just kind of tries to give looks of intensity when the script says so.

And then there’s the little kid, whose awareness of his cuteness is only slightly more annoying than his “precocious” dialogue, which has him exchanging smug innuendos with his grandfather. Yuck.

This was a nice try at creating family entertainment. But for some reason, all I can think about is big, greasy bucket of chicken. And then I remember I’m a vegetarian—who hates lousy movies.

Around the Bend is rated "R" and opens in select theaters on October 8.