Downtown Owl (2024)

It's the mid-80s and Julia takes a temporary teaching position at the high school in Owl, North Dakota, to get "out of [her husband's] hair" for a bit while he's working on his doctorate. She's soon binge-drinking with her new bestie in the town's only bar, crushing on the former high school football star, befriending a quiet older man, and getting involved in the high school's gossip mill. She's also starting to take stock of the state of her marriage.

While all of that sounds fine, the story just spills out onto the screen in a jumble. And not a jumble with bright bits that catch your eye or novel pieces that make you think, but just a pile of stuff you've seen a million times before -- the equivalent of junk draw detritus like soy sauce packets and dulled paperclips. Ed Harris and Lily Rabe are good, but I don't know why this movie exists.

C