Having lived in Michigan's Upper Peninsula (30 miles from Escanaba) in the mid-1990s, I was eager to see this film. It begins promisingly enough, with some superficial understanding of the values and quirks of U.P. life. But Jeff Daniels apparently was not content with a low-key approach that would have been fitting given the place and the people. Instead, he introduces extremely crude humor and some wildly inappropriate mystical/supernatural elements. Although there is a good movie to be made about this practically unknown region of the U.S., this is NOT it.
Review of Escanaba in da Moonlight
