Desert Blue

A movie like this depends on tone more than anything else. Moviegoers who don't like the rhythm may grow impatient. It's not a romance, a drama or an adventure, but the evocation of a time and place. The characters are odd because they grew up that way.

Strains itself in trying to be relentlessly offbeat.

...coast[s] along on the charisma of the actors...

**_Long stop at a desolate settlement in the Southwest and the peculiar people thereof_** A TV actress and her professor father (Kate Hudson and John Heard) stop at a dying mining town in the desert to see a roadside attraction and inadvertently become stuck there for a few days. The eccentric citizens include a young man preoccupied with his late father’s dream (Brendan Sexton III), a girl obsessed with pipe bombs (Christina Ricci), an ATV racer (Casey Affleck) and a woman who runs a diner (Lucinda Jenney). “Desert Blue” (1998) is a quirky indie drama influenced by TV’s Northern Exposure. It’s comparable to Australia’s "Rikky and Pete" from ten years prior and a little “Gas Food Lodging,” as well as later movies like "3 Nights in the Desert” and a bit o’ “Don’t Come Knocking.” There’s an air of emptiness and the story is kind of boring, throwing in a curious subplot about an ominous cola factory. Still, the flick has its points of interest, like finding inspiration in the least likely places. You’ll see some snow here and there, which, by happenstance, was the most snow the isolated town had seen in three decades during shooting. It runs 1 hour, 27 minutes, and was shot in Goldfield in southwest Nevada with the Los Angeles Aqueduct scenes done in Jawbone Canyon, which is almost a 4-hour drive southwest of Goldfield and a 2-hour drive north of Los Angeles. GRADE: B-/C+