Million-dollar Sweepstakes!
Eighty-something Woody Grant (Bruce Dern) has clearly turned the corner into senility. His life has narrowed to an obsession about collecting on that type of pathetic million-dollar sweepstakes letter most Americans exit the womb recognizing as a hoax. Problem is, at life’s end when we’ve lost our minds, we inadvertently become suckers, and as P.T. Barnum said, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Son David (Will Forte) is a going-nowhere-fast stereo salesman. Having picked up his freeway-tromping dad one too many times, he decides a sweepstakes-collecting road trip with the old man is in order. Neither one has much left to lose. Isn’t that sad? But then, that’s life. The sad thing here is boring storytelling.
To Grandmother’s House They Go
But not before we get treated to a bit of stultifying backstory. And then it’s off to Nebraska. Remember Nebraska? This is a movie about Nebraska. That’s where all Woody’s antediluvian former cronies and sneaky relatives live, who naturally (and immediately) set about trying to separate him from his, as of yet, unclaimed millions.Underway, they stop off to see Mt. Rushmore. Woody’s underwhelmed. Woody loses his false teeth. When they find them near some railroad tracks, they both take turns pretending they’re not his. Good times. The whole fun-filled family finally arrives in Nebraska at the home of dad’s monosyllabic brother (Bob Odenkirk). Mom and Dave’s better-adjusted anchorman sibling have followed them. Various long-unseen relatives are parked on a couch, watching a Bears-Packers game.
Two trucker-hatted, side-burned, fast-food-bellied cousins (Devin Ratray, Tim Driscoll) have devolved into classic arrested-development knuckle-dragging freeloaders, who immediately take to dissing David’s driving. “It took you (snicker) how long to get here?” They do community service. For rape.
Woody and David bond feebly, Woody’s old grease-monkey colleague Ed Pegram (Stacy Keach) tries to squeeze Woody for money, and the town welcomes its returning hero by putting Woody’s picture in the local paper. Woody gets a standing ovation at a restaurant for being a millionaire. Except that he’s not one yet. Woody might yet score a Prize Winner hat. But I won’t say for sure in case, when this review ends, you still have a hankering to watch “Nebraska.”
Finally we get about two minutes’ worth of real drama and tension when Woody’s normally nagging wife heroically defends him from the vulpine relatives. The other 153 minutes of “Nebraska” is watching grass grow to a plaintive and melancholy score.
There’s a running crescendo-deflation gag, where Woody responds to excited inquiries with (slight pause) “Huh?” All of which are meant to be comedic, but played too deadpan by Dern, they simply serve to make one cringe at the prospect of losing one’s mind.
Everything about these characters and locations is about the non-Hero’s Journey, as it were—life lived terminally inside the village compound, with no aspirations to anything other than a bit of comfort, and being drearily okay with that. It is possible to make an exciting movie about unexciting lives. But “Nebraska” is not that movie.
