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'Daltry Calhoun' veers between poignant and wacky

By CHRISTY LEMIRE
The Associated Press

"Daltry Calhoun" probably is not the movie that will finally force us to consider Johnny Knoxville as a serious actor — it's too slight, too unfocused.

But starring in the title role as a small-town Southern sod salesman who's losing his business while gaining the daughter he hasn't seen in years, Knoxville shows he has planted the seeds for a career that should develop into something varied and unexpected.

Miramax Films

'Daltry Calhoun'

The verdict: Knoxville shows promise in an otherwise unwieldy movie.

Director: Katrina Holden Bronson
Starring: Johnny Knoxville, Juliette Lewis, Elizabeth Banks, Sophie Traub, David Koechner
Release date: Sept. 23, 2005
Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, drug material and language.

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The debut feature from writer-director Katrina Holden Bronson allows him to show that he's not just the guy from "Jackass" and "The Dukes of Hazzard." Knoxville plays the part with a mix of down-home, good-ol'-boy charm and believable awkwardness, and some of the best scenes are the ones he shares with newcomer Sophie Traub as his daughter, June, a 14-year-old musical prodigy.

Too often, though, Bronson's pacing is choppy, and she veers too wildly between wacky and poignant.

"Daltry Calhoun" starts out in an intentionally madcap way that feels self-conscious and overbearing. Shot in a jumpy, hand-held manner as if it were a home movie, with June providing narration, it shows Daltry's back story with May (Elizabeth Banks), the teenage mother of his baby girl. The dialogue includes screamed lines like, "You — you just shut that piehole!" as one of May's big-haired relatives forces the young, useless Daltry to leave her alone for good.

Fourteen years later, Daltry is the biggest thing in Ducktown, U.S.A., having built up his business laying down sod for the most exclusive golf courses and planning a course of his own.

May, who's suffering from a terminal illness (one of several plot contrivances), tracks Daltry down and asks that he take care of their daughter after she's gone. Traub plays June with a tomboyish sweetness as she fumbles through adolescence.

Juliette Lewis, meanwhile, just fumbles in playing Flora, the clingy sporting-goods store clerk who aspires to be Daltry's girlfriend. Though, to her credit and to Banks', both bring some heart to roles that start out as twangy Southern stereotypes.