The Wendell Baker Story (2005)

Absolutely the worst movie.

As somebody who had not heard any of this before, it became a curious phenomenon to sit and watch a film and slowly have the realities begin to click into place.

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

This film is about an ex-conman running a retirement home. He finds conscience and helps the deprived elderly there.Since it stars Luke Wilson, Owen Wilson and Will Ferrell, I thought "The Wendell Baker Story" would be entertaining. However, I was hugely disappointed as it turned out to be a tedious bore. The story is not engaging and poorly developed. The lead character is unsympathetic, and indeed unlikable, and I care little about him. There is no joke or humour in it at all. I can see Owen Wilson tries very hard to be entertaining and sarcastic as a crooked manager, but he fails to liven up the bleak atmosphere. "The Wendell Baker Story" is neither funny nor entertaining. I seriously expected more of the Wilson brothers and Will Ferrell.

Simple. That is an appropriate summary of "The Wendell Baker Story." It was written and directed by Luke Wilson, who also plays the title role. And, it comes across more as a simple story and vanity project than it does a feature movie. Shot in and around Austin, Texas, it is a story of a small time con artist who gets a chance to go straight after a prison term, and perhaps re-win the affection of his one true love.Luke Wilson is Wendell Baker, who makes fake Texas I.D. cards just across the border into Mexico. When he gets busted, he spends a few years in the Huntsville prison, where he has a knack for making friends and being helpful. Bored, he reads Conrad Hilton's book and, when up for parole gets a chance to work at a "retirement" hotel.This "hotel" is being mis-run by Neil King (brother Owen Wilson) for his own benefit and, when certain residents get to be a burden get shipped out to a "farm" in Oklahoma. Wendell decides that he will rescue these poor should and expose Mr King for what he is.Two of the more interesting characters in the "hotel" are Seymour Cassel as Boyd and Harry Dean Stanton as Skip. Kris Kristofferson is Nasher, who turns out to be someone totally different from what others think.Eva Mendes is Doreen, who grew up knowing Wendell, and as the movie starts is Wendell's girlfriend. But she gets tired of waiting for him to "find" himself and moves on.It is obvious that Luke Wilson wrote the script to be meaningful in places about relationships, but to me it came across as shallow. A mostly entertaining 95 minutes, but in the end not much of a movie. Nothing memorable.SPOILERS: Nasher turns out to be a pilot, and he flies them to Oklahoma to retrieve the men that had be "Greyhounded" there. After, he disappears. With the help of two 16 year old girls they had met at a convenience store, Wendell, Boyd, and Skip get the cops onto King and his assistant. Then, Wendell finds out that Nasher really was a wealthy oil and hotel magnate who is requesting that Wendell run his flagship hotel in Austin on Lake Travis. There Wendell finally gets Doreen back.

OK now I have always liked Luke and Owen Wilson as well as many other stars in this film such as Eddie Griffin, Eva Mendes, Kris Kristofferson, and Will Ferrell but for some reason this movie wasn't funny at all. It was more dramatic and from the looks of the trailer, I was expecting a comedy with several laughs since it starred Luke and Owen Wilson, but I only laughed like twice the whole movie and I was expecting to laugh way more. It kind of tells the life of Wendell Baker, but it really fails to make anything about his life funny like they should have. Overall I give this a 4 out of 10 because I was expecting a comedy, not a drama. I wouldn't recommend this to comedy fans, but if you are looking for something different and you are a Luke Wilson fan then you may like this, but i'm not sure because I am a Luke Wilson fan and I didn't even like this one.

I took my chances with this one, even though I kind of suspected from the looks of it, that it would be kind of dumb, and I was right.Not the best of the Wilson brothers' writing. It's stupid, half-witted and quite frankly a waste of time and money.The film is about Wendell Baker (Luke Wilson), who gets arrested for supplying illegal Mexicans with fake Texas State identification cards. After he is released from prison, he goes out looking for his ex-girlfriend, and gets a job at a retirement home. Owen Wilson plays the head nurse, and although there are a few funny lines from time to time...in the end it's a very bad movie.I think that the film would have been better had there been more tight shots, more quick dialogue and hadn't of had the worst music ever.I give it a three simply because it was creative and there were a few funny parts, but all in all it was just terrible, and I would definitely not recommend it.