McConaughey was surely excellent in Dazed and Confused, but it says here Stewie forgot the actor’s amusing performance in Edtv (an early mock of the rising reality television genre), and then the Family Guy episode was drawn and written before 2011’s Bernie in which McConaughey similarly shined. Amid a lot of bad films he’s made a few good ones.
All of which brings us to Mud. At Rotten Tomatoes 98% of the critics who reviewed it liked it, the great Joe Morgenstern at the Wall Street Journal referred to it as a classic, and then the New York Post’s Lou Lumenick raved, singling out “McConaughey’s remarkable comeback” with “a terrific turn as the title character.” It should be stressed up front that critics know their stuff, their reviews surely inform my film choices, but in this case it’s worth asking if they watched the same average, and full of holes movie that I did.
About McConaughey’s performance, those who haven’t yet seen Mud would be wise to substantially dial down their expectations. Indeed, there’s nothing new or original about the actor’s performance. Unless critics truly notice things that the average viewer does not, it’s quite simply the case that McConaughey plays the same laconic, Texas-drawling character he plays in every film. Mud provides no evidence that the actor has spread his thespian wings in any way, and the accent is merely a reminder of his limited range. Along those lines, do viewers remember How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days in which McConaughey and the rest of his Brooklyn-based family all had Texas accents? If so, you’ll recognize the drawl in this one. Nothing changes.
As for the film itself, it begins with teens Ellis (Tye Sheridan) and Neckbone (Jacob Lofland) transporting themselves on a motorboat out to a remote island in the lake country of Arkansas. They go there based on a tip that there’s a serviceable, but abandoned motorboat stuck in the trees from a recent hurricane. They intend to make the boat their Hands free access.
Upon reaching the boat they discover non-perished food that indicates someone has beaten them to it. That someone is McConaughey’s character “Mud,” and right away the story starts to unravel.
Mud is on the run from the police, along with the family of a man whom he killed for the man having been intimate with Mud’s lifelong unrequited love, Reese Witherspoon’s Juniper. Mud describes Juniper in glowing terms, including her long legs which, for anyone who’s ever seen Witherspoon in person, knows do not exist. Couldn’t they have at least altered the script slightly with Witherspoon’s diminutive stature in mind?
Ellis and Neckbone required a motorboat to get to the remote island, but somehow Mud just showed up there despite the manhunt for him. Mud immediately reveals himself as a chain smoker, but also a chain smoker who is starving. Mud asks the boys to bring him back food that is in short supply, yet in concert with his starvation (we have to watch Mud chug Beenie Weenies a couple of times) we’re supposed to believe that cigarettes are plentiful.
Notable is that Ellis works for his fisherman father. This requires mention because upon return from their first visit to the remote island where Ellis and Neckbone meet Mud, Ellis is late for work.
Of course after that Ellis and Neckbone regularly visit the island given Ellis’s sympathetic view of Mud. It seems their responsibilities at home disappear, after which they suddenly have easy access to a motorboat and motorcycle in order to bring Mud provisions. All this begs the question why they covet the boat up in the trees to begin with.
Ellis takes a shine to Mud, and he does because his own father is set to be divorced by his mother who has fallen out of love with him. The underlying story of the film is one of men putting women on a pedestal, only for those women to spurn their worship.
Mud tells Ellis and Neckbone that he’s waiting on the island for Juniper, and that once she reaches him they’ll take the boat from the trees and motor off into the sunset (free of police and others eager to kill him) in order to live happily ever after. Yes, the woman who has never been fully committed to Mud is now going to embrace life with a man who faces prison time for murder.
As the film goes on, Ellis and Neckbone bring Mud food, supplies necessary for fixing the boat, and remarkable for two spindly teens, an outboard motor that they’ll fix with Mud so that he can make his escape. Recognize that amid all of this the police are searching for Mud, Neckbone’s guardian of sorts (Galen, played by Michael Shannon in a role that makes little sense – it’s not a reach to suggest that the edit of this film was a nightmare) sees them on the island with the outlaw, but the police and family members of the murdered adulterer never seem to find an island that Mud curiously reached sans transportation, and that Ellis and Neckbone routinely visit.
Amid all this the two teens remarkably spy Juniper, and get a note to her from Mud in which he professes his love, plans for escape, and presumably more. You see, Mud lacks food, but somehow he has cigarettes, white stationary and pens (he has to make a list of what he needs to get off of the island!) in surplus. In fairness, one of the few comical scenes involved the teens getting the note to Juniper, Juniper telling them what it said, only for the Ellis and Neckbone to acknowledge having already opened it for reading.
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