Happy, Texas

Day 239 - 8/26/09 - Movie #235

BEFORE: Wrapping up prison-break comedies with another film about convicts on the run.

THE PLOT: Two escaped convicts arrive in the town of Happy, Texas, where they are mistaken for a gay couple who has been hired to prepare the town's little girls for a beauty pageant.

AFTER: I found this rather charming, it had a bit of that "Raising Arizona" feel to it - like a lost Coen Brothers movie, mixed with a little bit of "Three's Company"... The two convicts are played by Steve Zahn and Jeremy Northam - Zahn I've seen in a bunch of films like "Safe Men" and "Sahara" (and heard in animated films like "Stuart Little" and "Chicken Little") but I've never seen Northam before... Zahn plays one of the greatest-ever named characters, Wayne Wayne Wayne Jr. - who has to take charge of training little girls for the "Little Miss Fresh Squeezed" pageant while his partner cases the town's bank. Partner as in "partner", since the two men are pretending to be a couple.

William H. Macy does a fine job as a small-town sheriff, who is inspired by the presence of a gay couple to come to terms with his own sexuality, and Ron Perlman plays the Marshal hunting for the escaped convicts - which also includes a third convict played by M.C. Gainey (last seen by me as a different convict, piloting the plane in "Con Air").

I liked that the pageant was a pretty good backdrop for the action, as both men manage to fall in love with (female) town residents - and the gay references weren't over the top. It's rare when a gay man isn't portrayed in a Hollywood film as a screaming drama-queeny stereotype - a peek at what a gay club in Texas might look like (cowboy hats and line-dancing) actually seems quite progressive and sort of possible.

RATING: 7 out of 10 flaming batons