Road trip of regression in 'Full Grown Men'

The first thing to notice about "Full Grown Men" is the distinct glow of its world. The setting is suburban, and yet everything is as vivid and bright as a child might experience it. The clouds are bright white. The sky is a rich blue. Everything is in focus, and everything is beautiful.

Yet something is wrong. There's something creepy and frozen about these images, something regressive and empty. Before we're five minutes into the story, before the story is even launched, director David Munro has given us the mood and hinted at his message through images. "Full Grown Men" is an artistically integrated film that introduces a refreshing new talent to the independent scene, one who combines the visual palette of filmmaker Harmony Korine with an all-important sense of narrative.

At the movie's center is Alby, a no-longer-young man with lank, center-parted hair, who has grown too large for his swaddled psychic state. He has a sentimental attachment to his childhood because he wants to remain a child. And so, fleeing adult responsibility, he goes on a road trip in search of his childhood. His goal is to go backward, and the challenge for Munro, a San Franciscan who co-wrote the screenplay with wife Xandra Castleton, is to grow this character - to provide forward motion despite his protagonist's resistance.

Perhaps the key to the film's success is that Munro is sympathetic to Alby without being taken in by him, so he is able to show Alby's dilemma with some distance and perspective. The film benefits further from the fact that almost everyone knows someone like Alby. Even as he threatens to drive us crazy with his dreamy, drifty nature and the underlying selfishness this brand of sensitive self-absorption involves, we understand what he's going through.

Men who'd rather be boys are usually presented as loving and delightful souls, and the analysis goes no deeper. But Matt McGrath gives a delicate, complicated performance that renders the character in psychologically rich terms. Alby is a car crash in slow motion. The flying splinters of his impact with reality are the shards of vintage toys - and he holds onto them like talismans from a safe time. As he travels, he encounters other characters lost in their own dreamscapes, such as Deborah Harry as a former professional mermaid, living in her tank-like camper.

Here's a rare example of a movie in which the cameos are an integral part of the film. There's a riveting appearance by Alan Cumming, playing a hitchhiker from hell, and a wonderful bit from Amy Sedaris, whose one scene is the comic highlight of the movie. She plays a waitress who segues from romantic interest in Alby to complete hostility when she realizes he's broke. Hers is a terrific example of comic acting, in which it's possible to trace the precise development of the character's thought on her face.

Of course, Alby is in a losing game with time. We know that from the first minutes. But "Full Grown Men" has a lot more to say than that some people really ought to grow up. Beneath its placid, candy-colored surface, it has a psychological sophistication, a nuanced understanding of the mistakes that allow people to get locked into an earlier time - which is really the same as getting locked into a version of themselves.

In the lovely and unexpected terms of this odd, original and concise film, Alby is able to enter the stream of real emotion only when he turns away from a rarefied focus on his own experience. "Full Grown Men," a poignant, quirky and effective alternative to the usual soulless, computer-generated summer fare, is well worth a look.

-- Advisory: Adult situations.

E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page E - 10 of the San Francisco Chronicle