As an old-school Jim Gaffigan fan, I really want to see the guy do well and will support anything that he does. He has kind of struggled to find his legs as far as what he is going to be in cinema but I believe he has determined that despite the fact that he is a comedian, that he doesn't want to do comedy roles in films and has been pursuing only serious dramatic roles in moves as of late.
Perhaps this is a good thing because had Jim done the comedy route he would almost certainly end up being a type-cast character that people would quickly bore of. At least that is how I imagine it. I don't recall a single Gaffigan comedy film though, and I can think of several of his serious roles.
Jim plays the role of Cameron Edwin and he is a pleasant man who lives in a a small city with his wife and two children. His life has been dedicated to science and he is the host of a children's science program that just hasn't quite managed to take off and he is relegated to late-night airtime where almost nobody even gets to see it. His rather boring life is upended one day when he is standing somewhere mailing a letter when a car, with a person inside of it, drops out of the sky into the street behind him.
I think if we were ever in the street and a car dropped just meters away from us that it would be all over the news but when Cameron is telling his family about it at dinner, they seem hesitant to believe that he is even telling the truth.
Jim's family is just fine. They all seem reasonably loving and get along, but at the same time everyone seems a bit upset that their lives are not more exciting and Jim himself is a bit disappointed that things didn't really work out so well for him and he is lamenting that he is soon going to be entering his twilight years and doesn't feel as though he has accomplished as much as he would have liked to.
Before you ask, yes, that is "Kim Wexler" standing next to Gaffigan and she is great in this but unfortunately for actress Rhea Seahorn she was so good in Better Call Saul that she struggles to be anything else. In Linoleum it almost seems like we are watching a prequel of Saul as to what her life was like before she became a lawyer that worked for Slippin' Jimmy. If what i just wrote there doesn't mean anything do you, this is probably a good thing. As wife "Erin" she does a fine job in this movie.
The two of them have a daughter named "Nora" and she is probably the 2nd most featured character in the film.
Nora is a bit of an outcast at school. She isn't disliked but she just doesn't really try to be popular. She also is a self-proclaimed lesbian but that evolves as things go on. She is hyper intelligent and doesn't really get along with anyone... well, that is until she does.
So now you see all the major characters so what is the story?
Well, I can't really get into that without potentially spoiling the one thing about this film that makes it different and probably the only thing about it that makes it good. This film has a sort of artistic way about it that when it does all finally come together you are left wondering what the hell did I just see? Was any of it real? What parts of it were just someone's imagination and what parts of it actually happened?
It is spelled out to us a bit that the universe is all the perception of your own mind or something along those lines, but in the end when the credits do finally come on you are left second-guessing yourself about something that you might have missed that happened in the story.
I like to think in a film, and I like twist endings, but this one was perhaps a little bit too confusing with the ending for me to really grasp all of what happened there. Basically we are shown an hour and 10 minutes of one story, but in the last 10 minutes of the film the entire thing gets put on its head and much of what we have been getting told isn't true... or is it?
I'm sorry but I can't say more about it than that without potentially spoiling it. There is a certain demographic out there that this film will appeal to and the rest of the people will be confused or perhaps not even make it to the end of it all.
Should I watch it?
I think that aside from certain people that no, you should not. This doesn't mean that the move isn't good. I truly think that it is good. It's just kind of a slog with well, at the end, I believe that most people will feel as though it was a waste of time because the producers spent the past 100 minutes tricking you into thinking this movie is about something it isn't about and when it all comes together you are left with at "what the hell?" sort of feeling.
Perhaps that doesn't make any sense but I kind of feel like it was artistic in a way that is going to get it accolades from places like Cannes and SXSW, but it isn't going to translate into mass appeal or worse for the people that make these things, mass consumption. This film made just over $100,000 a the box office and is one of those films that I don't think was ever intended to make any money at cinemas.
Jim does put on the best performance of his acting career though and if you are fan of him, this is very nice to see. I rate this as "maybe" because unless you are a big fan of Gaffigan like I am, you probably wont make it all the way to the end of this one.
Linoleum can be streamed on Hulu and rented on a number of other platforms including Amazon. It is not on Netflix
