By Nigel Watson
Cameron Edwin (Jim Gaffigan) is cycling home on a normal day in the small American suburban town of Fairview Heights when a bright red sports car plummets from the sky and crashes in front of him. It is a shocking intrusion into his everyday reality, which is more puzzling because the injured driver looks a bit like himself.
Even weirder, the red car driver, Kent Armstrong (also played by Gaffigan), replaces Cameron as the host of his failing Above and Beyond TV science show. Armstrong moves into the house opposite Cameron, his car isn’t damaged at all, and his teenage son (Gabriel Rush) begins a friendship with Cameron’s daughter.
Into the mix is a ‘Russian’ rocket that crashes into Cameron’s backyard. His life is in crisis, as his wife is divorcing him, his father is in a care home, losing his memory, and he wonders what happened to his dream about being an astronaut. He tries building the rocket wreckage into a viable spacecraft, but as often mentioned throughout the film, ‘it’s not that simple’.
Cameron’s wife (Rhea Seehorn) and daughter (Katelyn Nacon) are also trying to work out their place in the universe and whether they can make life ‘fantastic’. On the night of Halloween, everything comes to a head, and flashbacks indicate that nothing is as it seemed. There are shifts in the timeline and memories, and the whole notion of reality is put into question.
A profound sadness runs throughout the film, and the closing sequences are quite confusing, to say the least. Director Colin West gives us a mid-town, mid-life crisis movie that aspires to the profundity of 2001: A Space Odyssey but like Cameron’s rocket; it doesn’t quite reach those cinematic heights.
Linoleum is out now on digital platforms.
