Prince Avalanche

Director: David Gordon Green
Year Released: 2013
Rating: 1.0

Two blue-collar workers, played by Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch, spend a lonely summer painting the roads and getting hammered (thanks to a friendly truck driver who keeps them supplied with booze): Hirsch dreams of hook-ups in the city while Rudd writes letters back to his girlfriend ... who happens to be Hirsch's sister. With the two principal characters being so singularly defined it's difficult to find much to empathize with either of them and the 'poetic touches' by Green (the woman with the burned down house, the dead turtle symbolizing Rudd's doomed relationship) play like amateur hour. Rudd, Hirsch and Green are more than capable of being humorous and inventive - Green is one of the minds behind the hilarious Eastbound and Down show, which I am a huge fan of - but everyone's sweating too hard to try to keep this serious.