Prince Avalanche (2013)

Comedy, Drama

Director: David Gordon Green
Writers: Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, David Gordon Green, Sveinn Ólafur Gunnarsson
Starring: Emile Hirsch, Paul Rudd, Lance LeGault, Joyce Payne

In this feel-good friendship-themed comedy/drama, Paul Rudd and Emile Hirsch (Into the Wild) play a couple of road workers who spend the summer of 1988 repainting traffic lines on a desolate country highway in Texas that was ravaged by wildfire. Alvin (Rudd) is dating Lance (Hirsch)'s sister, they are two very different kinds of people and not in the best relationship with each other, but after spending a couple of months in the wilderness alone together, the two develop a very strong and emotional bond, becoming close friends.

Adapted from the Icelandic 2011 comedy Either Way, by Hafsteinn Gunnar Sigurðsson, Prince Avalanche marks the return to the independent roots of its writer-director David Gordon Green, who's taken a break of a few years from the indie dramas he got us used to (George Washington, All the Real Girls), focusing more on R-rated comedies, like Pineapple Express or Your Highness.

Earnest without being too sappy, with a gorgeously crisp photography and pitch-perfect performances from both of its protagonists, Prince Avalanche is a beautiful movie about relationships, and how unlikely ones can blossom under the proper circumstances.

Plot summary from IMDb: Two highway road workers spend the summer of 1988 away from their city lives. The isolated landscape becomes a place of misadventure as the men find themselves at odds with each other and the women they left behind.

Awards: 3 wins & 4 nominations.
Runtime: 94 min
R