A nerdy, self-sufficient highway road painter (Paul Rudd) takes on his girlfriend's slovenly, obnoxious brother (Emile Hirsch) as as an assistant and the two work, bond, argue, and cope with the heartaches of love amid the solitude of their desolate Central Texas locations. After several pocket padding detours into inane, big budget studio comedies, David Gordon Green returns to the type of film by which he first built his name as a director, an observant and picturesquely filmed minimalist story. Here his well-established leads are very hard to take, even in goofball roles, and probably do him a disservice where unknowns would have possibly sufficed. Green also pulls off a curious feat where not only does it seem that we are offered half a movie, but also that it feels way, way overlong at that.
