Finding Joe

Finding Joe feels like a homemade quilt: It's warm and comforting, but visually busy, with a repeating pattern that some will find stuffy and overwhelming.

Campbell's admirers will probably enjoy the documentary, but I don't think it will do much for anyone else.

Campbell's career and influence encompass much wider fields of interest than are considered here, despite the picture's colorful surface. Narrowing its focus to the simplest inspirational gist, with zero insight into the man behind it, Finding Joe winds up seeming like an infomercial for a personal-growth program.

Finding Joe is so centered on the self-realization of the individual that it provokes one to contemplate the millions of oppressed, imperiled people that haven't the luxury of pursuing such an inner quest.

Everyone's comments are thoughtful and articulate but everyone stays "on message" so steadfastly that no dialogue ever ensues. It's 20 people giving the same lecture.

Finding Joe maintains that every person should, as Joseph Campbell wrote, "find your bliss," a potentially valuable nugget of wisdom that this film manages to reduce to 80 minutes of celebs giving themselves hugs.

It comprises some 20 talking heads, each pretty much saying the same thing, interspersed with film of children dressed up as mythical heroes, enacting the stages of the "hero's journey."