Movie review: Inventiveness crushed under lumbering 'RV'

Film is a long, painful ride for Robin Williams fans.

By Colin Covert, Star Tribune

Last update: April 27, 2006 - 5:42 PM

Robin Williams performances generally come in three flavors: zany dervish, mild-mannered evildoer or milquetoast.

In the family comedy "RV," he plays Bob Munro, a mousy soft-drink executive who is the office doormat. He's holding onto his job by his fingernails while his bullying boss, Frank (Tony Hale of TV's "Arrested Development"), grooms a younger, cheaper toady. Bob squeezes out clammy, unconvincing smiles whenever he has face time with the top man, but his eyes show that he's desperate to curl into an armadillo-like defensive posture.

Bob insulates his wife and grumpy, snappish son and daughter from anxiety by hiding his job worries. His pretense backfires when Tony demands that Bob be in Denver for business on the dates he was planning a Hawaii family vacation. Concealing the reason for the sudden change of plans, Bob piles everyone in a colossal rented RV and insists that they drive to the Rockies instead. The odyssey is a wearying, bumpy ride, for the dysfunctional Munros and audience alike.

Under the direction of Barry Sonnenfeld ("Wild, Wild West"), the picture lumbers along like a slow-moving vehicle delivering outdated comedy. It's bad enough that Bob's son dresses like a rapper, but allowing Williams to do a "yo, dawg" monologue is unforgivable. There is a sad inevitability about the family's misadventures, from invading raccoons to a broken parking brake to their prickly encounters with the Gornickis, an all-too-neighborly clan that wants to be good buddies with the Munros.

It's painful to see Williams, a famously inventive cutup, stuck in a film that finds humor in a man covered in liquid poo or clinging to the windshield wipers of a runaway vehicle. There already is an actor for such roles and his name is Tim Allen.

The actors mug as if their limp material was gangbusters, but few in the audience will be fooled. Most will agree with Bob's pouty daughter Cassie (Joanna "JoJo" Levesque) as she wonders why the over-friendly Gornickis stick to them like flypaper.

"Why do they even like us?" she wails. "We're not that appealing." How true. How very true.

*½ out of four stars

Rating: PG for crude humor, innuendo and language.

Colin Covert • 612-673-7186