If you just saw Alan Arkin blazing the start of a come-back trail as the biker grandpa in ‘Little Miss Sunshine’ you might be best off to skip this movie and leave it at that. Better to remember him as the young-at-heart political incorrect dirty old man instead of the amateur lawyer going to court for a cause.
In ‘Raising Flagg’ Arkin moves to small town Oregon where he is the town crank, Flagg Purdy, and is getting crankier by the minute. The predictable loss of a checker game to lifetime chum, fellow crony and former rival Gus Falk (Austin Pendleton— ‘The Mirror Has Two Faces,’ ‘My Cousin Vinny’) sets him on edge.
At least as “on edge” as octogenarian grandfathers get in Oregon, complete with the by-gollies and gee-willakers. The last straw is placed when Gus’ sheep begin urinating around Purdy’s well and that is about as edgy as it gets. Looking for an easy going movie? This is the one for you.
OK—there is more to the story than that, but not a lot more.
There is a small town court proceeding that doesn’t make it up to Arlo Guthrie’s Alice’s Restaurant with the 8x10 color glossy photos and blind judge, but has its good points. This is followed by a cozy rehash of Home for the Holidays wherein Flagg has a mid-life / end-of-life crisis and thinks he is dying. At least he tries to make a lot of people think he is dying, unsuccessfully.
In the course of his family’s assembling at his bedside we are treated to a parade of personalities ranging from Glenne Headly to Alan Arkin’s real-life former wife Barbara Dana and their son, Matthew Arkin, who plays their son in the film.
Each of these aspiring film personalities gets to show-case their own character in the context of small-town America and the result is funny, at times.
Matthew Arkin plays a motorcycle minister and Daniel Quinn plays his brother, a hippie drop-out who wears a pony tail in defiance of his father and raises composting worms for the burgeoning trash recycling market.
Lauren Holly sells real estate as “the spiritual real estate agent” and upsets Flagg with her pro-development stance.
Her sister Glenne Headly dispenses counseling over a radio talk-show with decidedly spicy subject matter, also to her father’s anguish. The fact is, all of the children seem to have chosen vocations around crafts that provide a continuing source of irritation to Flagg. But this is not to say they hate him.
Raising Flagg
Very limited opening February 2, 2007. MPAA: Rated PG-13 for brief drug content
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