I’ve been saying it for years: Actor Thomas Haden Church, best known for his supporting role in 2004’s “Sideways,” is cinema’s hidden weapon—a full-fledged, mega-movie-star leading man waiting to happen.
One suspects that the hilariously insouciant, laid-back, and world-weary quality he brings to all his roles (except maybe as Sandman in the Marvel Cinematic Universe) is the reason. He’s probably a lot like that in real life and couldn’t care less about promoting himself. I pray that Hollywood finally wakes up and realizes how much money they could make off this man, by giving him the attention he deserves—before it’s too late.
In Alex Lehmann’s “Acidman,” Church, perfectly ripened for this role, gives one of the best performances of his career, and he finally gets to carry a movie on his shoulders again, this time playing Lloyd, who lives in the woods, all Ted Kaczynski-like, except for his trusty dog-companion Miso.
Lloyd is not obsessed with bombs, however, but extraterrestrials. “Acidman” is basically what you’d get if you turned “Close Encounters of the Third Kind” upside down and shook all the UFOs out of it, leaving a subdued, well-acted portrait of a father-daughter reconciliation.
Shotgun Shack
Lloyd, like many men late in life who lack a wife, is going to seed. His ever-present overalls look like he’s been wearing them for three or four months straight, daily, and his rakish salt-and-pepper Van Dyke-ish beard is definitely more haphazard than intentional. Lloyd was an engineer back in the day, had a wife and kids, too, but once he felt that his offspring were old enough to fend for themselves, he walked away and never looked back.
Now, his days are filled fiddling with a jumbled hodgepodge of electronic equipment. He’s got a bit of the musician about him and enjoys layering trance-like squalls of harmonic distortion and found-sounds over a beat.
The word “Acidman” is spray-painted in neon orange across the side of his secluded woodland hut, compliments of local male, teen, off-roading thrill-seekers who sense Lloyd’s high-testosterone, shotgun-backed alpha territoriality, and like to challenge the old lion with graffiti and egg-lobbing.
Maggie
Maggie (Dianna Agron of “Glee” fame) is the beleaguered daughter of Lloyd. The two of them lost touch with each other many years ago after a falling out. And so Maggie, after a difficult search, has tracked dad down and traveled 2,000 miles by car to disrupt his curious hankerings and odd schedule in his forest hermitage. “How long were you planning on staying?” Lloyd wants to know.
It’s fairly obvious where the story is headed; accounts of children reconnecting with estranged, curmudgeonly, eccentric parents abound. But “Acidman” offers a couple of variations on the theme. Firstly, we learn that Maggie’s fled, if only temporarily, a marriage, and her deepest fear is that she’s genetically programmed, and therefore fated like unto the paterfamilias, to narcissistically bolt for freedom.
Second, her heartfelt attempt at reconciliation is tragic in that it’s genuinely, and rather shockingly, subordinate to the alien contact that pot-hazed, backwoods semi-madman Lloyd fervently craves. Much like “Close Encounters,” this is the tale of a once-ordinary individual beset by an other-dimensional thirst he can neither quench nor explain, and also “Close Encounters” from the jilted adult child’s perspective.
Lloyd may well be losing his mind; if not, he’s certainly mentally locked onto things that she cannot imagine. It’s not surprising to learn that Lloyd’s dad was a Methodist preacher. Perhaps Lloyd’s fixation with otherworldly beings is what becomes of the human religious impulse when the faith decays.
The most telling thing about him is his conviction that failing to respond to the aliens who pilot UFOs is bad human-with-alien etiquette. “They’re out there traveling the galaxy, they’re looking at hundreds of worlds, and they still come here to check on our planet, to make sure we’re okay,” he says, adding, “It would be rude not to acknowledge their presence.” He also feels he has “an obligation to say thank you.”
Performances
“Acidman” has in its sights a discourse regarding parenting, isolation, aging, extraterrestrial life forms, and mental health, but comes up a bit short. Agron brings a tremendous amount to the table acting-wise, but the woefully underdeveloped script is not on her side. She skillfully portrays a daughter desperately wanting to find out why her father abandoned her, and more importantly, whether he needs her help in his encroaching dotage, with apparent dementia circling like a flock of buzzards, but she never really manages to carry much weight as her own person.Church’s aloof, emotionally shut-down Lloyd is charismatic in that tiny windows of great clarity, discernment, wisdom, and humor open from time to time, leaving you wanting more. He’s quick with a barb, but also with a chuckle-worthy anecdote. Often he goes suddenly catatonic, with a military combat veteran’s “thousand-yard stare.” And of course some of his line deliveries, like “I’m ------- stoned,” are hilariously classic Church.
But despite his captivating performance, a similar script-based dearth of complexity drains his character’s effectiveness as well, and so he exists purely as the mythical father figure. More time should have been spent showing his reasons for walking out on his family, and also how he came by his all-encompassing need to reach out to spaceships in the night.
At least Thomas Haden Church finally got a leading role again. Let’s hope Hollywood is paying attention.
