Review: Trading Paint

John Travolta plays a widower and former dirt racer whose son (Toby Sebastian) is now carrying on the family name in the sport. Racing for his dad’s team isn’t going so well, in fact funds are getting harder and harder to come by and the current car just isn’t able to keep up. So Sebastian makes the controversial decision to switch over to Michael Madsen’s team, who is Travolta’s long-hated rival. Daddy’s a tad pissed about it to say the least. Shania Twain turns up as Travolta’s love interest, Kevin Dunn plays Travolta’s drinking buddy, and Rosabell Laurenti Sellers is Sebastian’s main squeeze.

 

Despite all of the Scientology stuff and a few allegations of creepy massage behaviour, I’ve always found John Travolta to come across like a pretty affable, nice guy. He’s also got obvious charisma and a bit of talent in there too. Unfortunately, that talent does not extend to choosing decent scripts, a lack of aptitude that he’s had all the way back to “Urban Cowboy”, but it’s been especially prevalent since the early 2000s. Lately he’s joined the direct-to-DVD/On Demand brigade for slumming has-been actors, and it’s pretty sad to see. Let’s be honest, the amusing but gimmicky “Look Who’s Talking” shouldn’t be one of the best films on a person’s CV, should it? Sadly it indeed is. This harmless but sloppy and archaic 2019 car-racing family drama is yet another on the Travolta Turd List of direct-to-DVD/On Demand films I’m afraid. Directed by Karzan Kader (apparently a Swedish-Kurd filmmaker) with a screenplay by Gary Gerani (“Pumpkinhead”, of all things) and Craig R. Welch (his first screenplay), it’s pretty crummy stuff. At around 80 minutes long, the film actually plays like it’s on fast-forward the whole time, with scant time to get your bearings. It’s very clunky stuff, the set-up especially.

 

Travolta isn’t in the worst of form here, and country-pop singer Shania Twain’s acting debut goes quite a bit better than you likely expect. However, do you remember the scene in “The Poison Rose” where Travolta teaches his real-life daughter to dunk donuts as though it’s some obscure tradition no one has ever heard of? Here Ms. Twain is apparently gobsmacked that doing donuts (driving in circles and creating skid marks) in a car is a thing that people do. Apparently Mr. Travolta is still attending Rydell High.

 

Rosabell Laurenti Sellers has some charisma, but her character gets largely forgotten about. Even worse is the rather dull and uncharismatic Toby Sebastian as Travolta’s moody son. He’s a bore who unfortunately is on screen far too often. Michael Madsen is pretty absurdly cast as a supposed top race car driver (Isn’t he in his 60s by now?), but the film otherwise benefits from his latter-day Michael Madsen meets latter-day Mickey Rourke screen presence. He’s at least watchable, if not credible in the part. Best of all is veteran character actor Kevin Dunn as Travolta’s old drinking buddy. The film is subpar, but Dunn doesn’t treat it as such. A very, very old Barry Corbin has a fun but very brief cameo as a radio show host. Can you tell that I’m straining to damn this thing with even faint praise? There’s some interesting people here, it’s a shame it’s at the service of a hackneyed story made very sloppily by rank amateurs.

 

Forgettable ‘Car go vroom’ film is far from Travolta’s worst, and in fact is probably a bit better than many of his other films in the last 10 years. However, it’s still poorly made. It’s not exactly incoherent, but the editing makes the narrative clunky and sloppy as hell. An easy miss, though I wouldn’t mind seeing Shania Twain in different surrounds, she’s actually pretty capable and charismatic on screen.

 

Rating: C-