Released 1996
Stars  John Turturro, Sam Rockwell, Catherine Keener, Dupre Lisa Blount, Dupre Annie Corley
Directed by Tom DiCillo

Thank heaven for little indie movies. Where else can you find a film that looks like it was actually shot in the real world, complete with crummy motels, litter on the roadside and flies buzzing around food? Box of Moonlight, Tom DiCillo's new comedy, is the kind of cockeyed, loosey-goosey charm that reminds us again how formula-bound most studio pictures are. This film isn't exactly unconventional, it's just a new riff on the road movie-buddy movie themes, but DiCillo plays it with enough crazy twists and unlikely touches to keep us guessing where it's going while having plenty of fun along the way.

Turturro, as good as ever, stars as Al Fountain, a stiff-necked electrical engineer who is the kind of punctilious party-pooper that won't let the men in his charge goof off during the last 15 minutes of their shift. The kind of workaholic perfectionist who even expects his little son to spend summer vacation learning the multiplication tables. Al's not a bad guy, he's just too serious; he needs a little loosening up. He gets that, and more, when he suddenly decides to do something impulsive for a change. When the out-of-town job he's supervising, the building of a windshield-wiper factory, is unexpectedly shut down, he decides to rent a car and hit the road. Telling his wife back in Chicago that he's going on a fishing trip with his workmates, he instead sets out in search of a lake where he spent one memorable childhood summer.

The lake, it turns out, is now a polluted eyesore, but on his way back Al almost literally runs into an oddball character who proves to be his exact opposite -- and just the person to give him a real taste of freedom. Kid (Sam Rockwell) is a happy-go-lucky young man who wears a ratty old Davy Crockett costume, lives in one half of a bisected trailer in the woods and makes a living reselling stolen lawn ornaments. Cheerfully proclaiming to be a societal dropout who is "off the grid" -- he's even torn up his social insurance card -- this Huck Finn innocent eats fistfuls of cookies for breakfast (served with milk in a dog's bowl), talks knowingly about Indian legends, and spends his time skinny-dipping or watching pro wrestling when he isn't filching the occasional garden gnome.

Box of Moonlight doesn't have the sustained hilarity of DiCillo's previous movie, Living in Oblivion, a deliriously inspired spoof of low-budget filmmaking, and not everything here works. But you forgive the film its weak moments because his attitude towards his characters is fundamentally gentle and sweet. You leave it feeling warm inside.

Summary by Martin Morrow, Calgary Herald