Prince Avalanche

David Gordon Green, after a dubious career turn making stoner comedies, has returned to his roots with the 2013 film Prince Avalanche, which is essentially a small, two-character study about men working on a road crew.

Paul Rudd is the boss, who seems like one of those guys who has always wanted to write the great American novel. He has a Freddy Mercury mustache and is in love with a woman but with a child but spends too much time away from her.

His partner is her brother, Emile Hirsch, a young lout who doesn't seem interested in much more than partying and sex. Rudd likes him okay, but doesn't think he'll amount to anything. He's amazed that Hirsch has yet to learn how to gut a fish.

The two have the incredibly tedious job of painting yellow lines down a highway that in Texas that has been closed due to wildfires. I would have thought, and I believe I have seen, trucks that do this, but these two push a cart-like object, and when they are done for the day camp by the side of the road.

Of course each will have a momentous event to deal with in their lives. They will fight and make up and come to an understanding (and drunkenly paint squiggly lines on the road). They are periodically visited by a good ol' boy truck driver, who offers advice and whiskey. Rudd meets a woman who lost her house during the fire, and she later appears like a phantom.

The film is a little too slow and modest to be moving. I did like the change of pace for Rudd, who doesn't play the twinkly guy we've seen in so many Judd Apatow movies.