Escanaba in Da Moonlight

In his directorial debut, actor Jeff Daniels helms his own script and stars as Rueben Soady, an easygoing fella who's become an embarrassment to his small town in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. As the only member of an avid hunting family to never bag a deer in a region where “bucks grow as big as Buicks,” Rueben has to daily suffer the verbal slings and arrows of his brother, Remnar (Joey Albright), and father, Albert (Harve Presnell), who also offers lots of wry backwoods commentary. Escanaba in Da Moonlight serves up amiable bumpkin stereotypes with heavy accents and a penchant for mistaking “posterior” for “posterity”…until the fart jokes start flying and the mystical moonlight visions appear. Is it an optional purchase? You betcha! (T. Rich)