Humboldt County

D: Danny Jacobs & Darren Grodsky; with Jeremy Strong, Brad Dourif, Frances Conroy, Fairuza Balk, Chris Messina, Peter Bogdanovich

This fine ensemble piece – thoughtful and cheering, even giddy in stabs – presents a seriocomic, sympathetic portrait of a pot-growing family operating along the coast of Northern California and in constant fear of a federal raid. Into their fringe enclave stumbles med student Peter Hadley (Strong), high-strung and straight as an arrow – about as obvious a candidate you can get for a wake-up call (call it trial by pipe). Humboldt County has a certain predictability in its arc, and a third-act tragedy bids too neatly for circularness, but then, how else to enable those terrific character actors (no doubt playing for peanuts) in some all-balls-out monologuing? Dourif (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest), especially, is tremendously moving; as the family’s patriarch and, turns out, its glue, too, he’s mad scientist gone Grizzly Adams, with just a soupçon of conspiracy theory. Humboldt County might not exactly surprise the senses, but in its warmhearted look at a family in breakdown, it excites something maybe even more surprising: tenderness.

This article appears in March 14 • 2008.

A note to readers: Bold and uncensored, The Austin Chronicle has been Austin’s independent news source for over 40 years, expressing the community’s political and environmental concerns and supporting its active cultural scene. Now more than ever, we need your support to continue supplying Austin with independent, free press. If real news is important to you, please consider making a donation of $5, $10 or whatever you can afford, to help keep our journalism on stands.

SUPPORT US

A graduate of the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas, Kimberley has written about film, books, and pop culture for The Austin Chronicle since 2000. She was named Editor of the Chronicle in 2016; she previously served as the paper’s Managing Editor, Screens Editor, Books Editor, and proofreader. Her work has been awarded by the Association of Alternative Newsmedia for excellence in arts criticism, team reporting, and special section (Best of Austin). The Austin Alliance for Women...