BOX OF MOONLIGHT (54)

Directed by: Tom DiCillo

Starring: John Turturro, Sam Rockwell, Catherine Keener

The Pitch: A joyless prig's robotic life is transformed when he meets an easy-going young drifter.

Theo Sez: Can a low-key approach and a mass of quirky detail redeem a crude, obvious and excruciatingly banal premise? Looks that way : the concept is mired in New Age wooziness, with a dated feel about it - echoes of early-70s films (TAKING OFF, THE LANDLORD) about strait-laced prigs learning to chill out, with the Bacchanalian climax like a clip from an old nudie flick - and Turturro's uptight character, checking his kid's multiplication tables over the phone and "trying to instil a healthy respect for authority" in his employees, is so contrived it's painful (can you guess the ending if I say he spends the entire film refusing to buy 4th-of-July fireworks because they're illegal?) ; yet the film itself feels loose and unforced, remarkably fresh under the circumstances. Maybe it's because its childish directness, not to say simple-mindedness - it's basically a fable, "The Ant and the Grasshopper" in reverse - actually fits the theme, which is the importance of freeing your Inner Child (Rockwell's character is even called 'the Kid', though he comes off more like a stoned chipmunk doing a Mike Myers impression) ; but more probably it's because of the constant eye for the offbeat detail, putting a spin on the material - setting it in an amiably twisted world of truculent small-towners, Jesus sightings on advertising billboards and obese little kids playing tag in the yards of rundown motels. Still unconvincing, but at least fun ; if nothing else, those of us who've waited years to hear Wall Of Voodoo's "Mexican Radio" in a movie should be satisfied.