CineVegas Review: ‘Patriotville’

Justin Long and Emmanuelle Chriqui (Don’t Mess With the Zohan) star in this movie directed by Talmage Cooley. The story follows young Chase Revere (Long) who runs the small town of Patriotville’s historical museum and battlefield with a passion unshared by the rest of the town. An economic downturn in Patriotville has businesses collapsing daily and the town council is scratching their heads about how to recover.

Chase puts his passion and knowledge of the town’s history to use and develops a plan to save the town from bankruptcy by promoting historical tourism, but the town’s mayor has other plans. With a group of Native Americans planning to build a new casino and hotel in the area, Mayor Cleveland Fishback will do literally anything to ensure Patriotville gets the casino over the rival town across the mountain.

Once Chase discovers the town council’s plan to develop a casino on his beloved battlefield grounds he mobilizes his efforts to stop the plans with the help of Lucy (Chriqui) whom he just met. Lucy is the exact opposite type of personality of Chase, laid back and mischievous. The two of them set out to start a petition but find the town’s residents do not welcome his enthusiasm against the casino and lash back at them with great vengeance.

‘Patriotville’ is a comedy that tries to be funny but perhaps tries to hard. Much of the film centers on the plot of the casino transaction and highlights the quirkiness of the town’s people, but the colorful nature of the town mostly comes off with little success. The majority of the humor in the film falls short, resulting in poorly written dialogue and ridiculous moments of absurdity amongst the town council. The mayor is a jacka** and the rest of the council are the fools by which he exacts his bullying tactics of leadership.

Long and Chriqui feel out of place in ‘Patriotville’ as they’re the only ones who seem “normal” in the town. Their acting isn’t bad, but just didn’t pop due mostly to the script they had to work with. There are moments when Long nearly sparks an ember of realism, but the faint glow quickly fades once the scene cuts to the other characters. Long’s trademark humor does appear just under the surface of his performance, but the sarcasm is overshadowed by the character’s door mat personality.

On the other hand, the film features some interesting visual use of locations and existing architecture in the town. The opening sequence contains a montage of shots from around the rundown town, painting a sort of reverse-Rockwellian image with closed businesses and decrepit vacancies. This was one element of the film that worked well, representing a small town in dire straights and the effects of the modern culture and economy on a community still trying to survive with it’s roots in tact.

I felt the ending of the film was a bit much to swallow. There was an attempt to inject a moral into the story of Chase and his efforts to save the town’s history and the message is delivered, but loses it’s punch as a direct result of the film’s lack of seriousness. Simply put, everything this story had going for it was diminished greatly by the lack of empathy and respect that is conjured by the residents of Patriotville.

The problem with ‘Patriotville’ isn’t the concept or even the story, but rather the execution of the story brings the film down. With the exception of Chase, few characters command any respect and most of them basically break down to being crude, stereotypical representations of what small town folk are like. Given a better script and a revised approach to the characters and the tone of the story, ‘Patriotville’ had potential as a more serious comedy but ultimately proves to mock itself.