Duwayne Dunham is an artist of seemingly dual identities; both a long-term collaborator of David Lynch – directing several episodes of Twin Peaks, and editing every instalment of The Return – and a filmmaker responsible for several live-action Disney movies, both on the big screen and direct to the Disney Channel. Arriving at this year’s Locarno Film Festival bearing a posthumous Executive Producer credit from Lynch, Dunham’s Legend of the Happy Worker is the meeting point between what appear from the outside to be polar opposites in tone. It doesn’t bear any of the celebrated director’s more hallucinatory, nightmarish hallmarks, but does share an equal fascination with small-town Americana; a view of the average working life which appears frozen at some point in the Eisenhower era. Dunham doesn’t aim to pierce this by probing into the dark underbelly of a picture-perfect community in the same way a film such as Blue Velvet – his first collaboration with Lynch – set out to, instead wearing his aw-shucks sincerity on his sleeve to the extent that the eventual darker turn feels hollow. 

However, even when Joe (Josh Whitehouse) rises through the ranks to a position where he can exploit his former co-workers, any signs that more pointed – if inarguably obvious – social satire will intrude on this carefree world don’t really come to fruition. This is a G-rated, hermetic universe that wouldn’t be out of place as the setting for one of his Disney movies, and with its stylization as a fairytale and direct nods to the Mouse House’s back catalogue (a Spanish dub of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs on constant repeat on the small-town’s only TV network is the source of the film’s best, silliest running gag), it can’t help but feel like an earnest tribute to the kind of movie that isn’t made anymore, not an examination of the seedy underbelly of such a setting. 

Joe is one of the dozens of employees for Mr. Goose (Thomas Haden Church, whose comparatively grizzled performance feels out of step with the rest of the ensemble), whose family have run an operation digging a giant hole for over a century. It now stretches miles wide and deep, with no clear end in sight, let alone a purpose, but it provides a living for hundreds of men, all singularly motivated by the prospect of digging a “damn fine hole”. However, the relative peace that comes with this simple life is threatened by the arrival of Uncle Clete (Colm Meaney), who comes armed with a proposition that can make those at the top more money, whilst cutting out the need for armies of employees to carry out the manual labour. It’s an old-fashioned tale about how power corrupts, told with utmost sincerity despite stylisation both out-of-time and more suited to the kind of animated Disney classic Dunham is riffing on. And yet I found it nothing less than beguiling throughout, a truly singular throwback despite being fashioned out of two distinct reference points, the director never tries to conceal, where every plot point that doesn’t register or performance that doesn’t feel in sync with the very specific tone are papered over with a reliable dose of offbeat charm.

There are admittedly plenty of times when it can be just as cloying, however. The constant repetition of things being described as “damn fine” by the characters never stops feeling like a too-cute Lynch homage, even though this screenplay was written and pitched to Lynch long before he co-created the TV series that would turn “damn fine coffee” into an unexpected catchphrase. And the belated transition to become a moralistic tale about how power corrupts arrives too late in the drama to feel anything but awkward; Whitehouse, cast perfectly as a plucky Capra-esque everyman, struggles to sell his character’s sinister turn in a way that resonates. The fable aspect of the film is its key selling point, but it’s far more enjoyable as a hangout movie in a community completely divorced from time. Its attempts to mine social commentary from a premise seemingly created purely for this reason are so simplistic and half-baked that it’s a surprise that something with this little ideological depth could be a passion project gestating for 40 years. If the quaint small-town charms feel cut from the same cloth as Lynch’s Americana influences, then the attempt to bring a moral to this story are broad and watered down enough to feel like they’d be at home in any of Dunham’s Disney Channel original movies.

Ultimately, I’m not convinced Legend of the Happy Worker even succeeds in its modest aims, but there’s an inherent charm to the world that Dunham creates, which makes that ever so slightly irrelevant. If nothing else, it feels like the distinctive work of a man who has worked for both the Disney Channel and one of the greatest directors in the history of American cinema.

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Written by Alistair Ryder