Get Low

A forgettable fable

Get Low, a glacially-paced portrait of real-life Southern boogeyman Felix “Bush” Breazeale, does little to broaden the scope of American mythology set to celluloid. Robert Duvall stars as the woods-secluded protagonist, who stages a funeral for himself before he’s dead, inviting anyone who’s willing to recount one of the fantastical, widely-told yarns about his life. Even with this rich premise, Get Low’s linear narrative is far too bare-bones to live up to any real-life legend. Competent performances from Duvall, Sissy Spacek and Bill Murray are wasted on a skeletal plot stretched into a mundane slog about an old man seeking redemption. Even worse, the epic fictions of Bush’s life are barely addressed, leaving us with an archaic rendition of Grumpy Old Men via Washington Irving.