In “Daltry Calhoun” we have yet another awful Miramax film that sat on a shelf for more than a year, and is only now being dumped into theaters thanks to the Weinstein Brothers’ going-out-of-business-with-Disney sale. If only they’d kept this one hidden in the closet and cut their losses, 100 precious minutes of this scribe’s life would not have been so regrettably misspent. I once saw Johnny Knoxville intentionally electrocute his own nuts on “Jackass,” and his shockingly bad turn in the title role of this movie is evidence he’s trying to inflict similar suffering on the rest of us.
Set in a fictional backwoods place called Ducktown, Tennessee, “Daltry Calhoun” is a misguided attempt from writer-director Katrina Holden Bronson to meld elements of the Coen Brothers homespun hilarity (she doesn’t even come close) with maudlin “coming of age” tripe from the Hilary Duff oeuvre. Newcomer Sophie Traub delivers a ponderous performance as June, the 14-year-old daughter Daltry abandoned as a child to go off and become a self-made sod magnate. June’s terminally ill mother May (Elizabeth Banks of “Seabiscuit”) doesn’t have much time left. What’s killing her character is never explained, but it’s clear Banks has come down with a nasty case of career poisoning. May wants to make absolutely certain Daltry has gotten his act together for June’s sake. He doesn’t, but then again, he’s not alone. Everything and everyone in “Daltry Calhoun” is out of sorts. (Rated PG-13 for sexual content, drug material and language. Running time: 100 minutes)
Originally published in the Santa Monica Daily Press print edition on September 23, 2005. Read the original PDF.