The Peanut Butter Falcon

Rule #1 is to party. On the run from entities that want them locked up or gone for good, two outcasts bump into each other on the swampy marsh lands of South Carolina. Both are running towards promised lands, in the hopes of realizing whatever last strands of ambition life has left over for them. One of them has downs syndrome, has been abandoned by his family, and is forbidden from leaving his government mandated residence at a senior living facility. The other, having lost his immediate family, has been abandoned by his community and doesn’t know better than to lash out at their injustices and turning into a fugitive. When they unexpectedly become each other’s company on a ragtag journey through rural Americana, Shia Lebouf’s tenacious, freewheeling, scruffy Tyler wants to set some disciplinary rules for their journey forth - don’t slow us down, keep me in charge, the works. Predisposed to having no mental filters owing to down’s syndrome, Zack Gottsagen’s Zac, conveniently forgets the rules instantly. When asked to repeat the rules, he blurts out that their first rule, is to party.
​

And party they will. “Peanut Butter Falcon” takes the both of them on an unsuspecting, dangerous, riotous, and even extremely cathartic journey. Apparently influenced by the classic Huckleberry Finn adventures, the movie finds emotional buoyancy in its characters and their interactivity, delivered by clear, original writing and composition. Lebouf and Gottsagen are exceptional in their imbibing of these roles - honest, visceral, plugged in. Dakota Johnson’s frazzled caretaker Eleanor, tasked solely with the hapless recovery of Zac back to the senior center - offers effective levity to the intense chemistry between the other two rowdier leads. Her pursuit inevitably brings the three together into one serendipitous unit - a found family forged by compassion and humane choice.

Through this journey, Tyler and Zac’s fraternity takes us through a cycle of revelations of their inner selves - of grit, kindness, sympathy, penance, and redemption - all under the pretext of a very funny yet charming endeavor. Zac, having grown up watching wrestling videos and ads for a wrestling school in South Carolina, escapes the senior facility to train at said school and become a wrestler. Tyler, having recently lost his brother, might be looking for an emotional anchor, a bond with a bodily soul that can cut through the rugged molasses of grief encircling him. Tyler takes it upon himself to train Zac whilst on their search for the wrestling school, a venture that helps them both deny the shortcomings of fate and burn brushes in search of alternate trails.
​

​“Peanut Butter Falcon”s biggest triumph, in a world of cinema that is increasingly devoid of optimism, is finding the notion of sheer unadulterated hope and joy. Even at the risk of appearing cheesy, it stays stubbornly in a rosy realm, and manages to win you over. That win doesn’t come about by a simplistic formula of a clean 3-act structure or a gratifying climactic elevation aided by pop music revelry. There is surrealism, for sure, but also, there is a staunch faith that the universe is perpetually barreling towards all things positive, aided by people who have the best at their heart despite their darker proclivities. And amidst these beautiful people, you find a family. You find that you’re not alone, cheered on by the goodwill of compassionate souls egging you onto whatever crazy endeavor you have lined up next. You find a world unbridled by the chains of convention, governed only by rules you make up.

Of which, rule #1 is to party.