Towelhead (2007)--1/5

Alan Ball really should stick with TV. With “Towelhead,” the “Six Feet Under” creator fumbles badly in rehashing the Academy Award®-winning hyperactivity of neighbors in “American Beauty.” “Beauty,” as you’ll recall, had the closeted, murderous, right-wing Marine. “Towelhead” ups the ante by presenting a racist, pedophilic, right-wing Reservist. Also, since everything in the film comes in twos, it has a womanizing and abusive Lebanese father. Whew.

“Towelhead” only ever advances via smarmy sexual and scatological happenings. Involving Jasira (Summer Bishil), a thirteen-year-old girl. Events that have little impact the first time, other than a general embarrassment for the actors involved, are often repeated. The somewhat novel scene in which the heroic middle neighbor refutes Jasira’s father in Arabic is copy/pasted beat-for-beat later in the film.

At the whim of Alan Ball, Travis (Aaron Eckhart), the Reservist, makes some idiotic decisions. He’s constantly in scenes with Jasira in, for example, a living room, a restaurant, or his front yard. For Jasira’s sake, this is a good thing; the saintly neighbor sees the two of them and becomes suspicious. A criminal of some intelligence would go to greater lengths to not get caught. It’s like Ball got a certain artistic staging of scenes in his head and never stopped to think.

“Towelhead” is supposed to be some sort of meditation on prejudice and American race relations. The sensationalized, phony acts on screen negate any sort of message.