Producers: Jamie Patricof, Lynette Howell Taylor, Alex Orlovsky, Duncan Montgomery and Dylan Sellers  Director: Derek Cianfrance   Screenplay: Derek Cianfrance and Kirt Gunn   Cast: Channing Tatum, Kirsten Dunst, Ben Mendelsohn, Peter Dinklage, LaKeith Stanfield, Juno Temple, Melonie Diaz, Uzo Aduba, Lily Collias, Jimmy O. Yang, Emory Cohen, Tony Revolori, Kathryn Stamas, Kennedy Moyer and Molly Price   Distributor: Paramount Pictures

Grade: C+

It’s a testament to Channing Tatum’s innate likability that he’s able to turn a story about a thief who escapes from prison and romances a woman while holing up for months in a big-box store into something approaching a crowd-pleaser.  Derek Cianfrance’s “Roofman” isn’t really much of a movie, but Tatum’s charm makes it more palatable than one might expect.

The script by the director and Kirt Gunn is based, though with substantial changes, on the criminal career of Jeffrey Manchester, an ex-soldier who became known as “Roofman” for his modus operandi of robbing fast-food franchises, mostly McDonald’s, by breaking through the ceilings at night, waiting until their staffs arrived the next morning, then taking them prisoner and locking them in the freezer before absconding with the cash on hand.  Though armed, he was unfailingly polite.  (We’re given a taste of his style in an early sequence with Tony Revolori as the McDonald’s manager.)  We’re told that the reason for his spree, which ran from 1998 to 2000, was his determination to provide a home and good life for his estranged wife (Melonie Diaz) and three young daughters.

Caught and sentenced to prison in North Carolina, he engineered an escape in 2004 by hiding in the undercarriage of a delivery truck and—as he explains in voiceover—instead of running as far away as he could (which would almost certainly bring quick recapture) hitchhiked to nearby Charlotte to connect with his old army buddy Steve (LaKeith Stanfield), who specialized in providing forged identity papers.  Unfortunately, as the man’s girlfriend (Juno Temple) explained, Steve, having reenlisted, would be away for some months, so Jeff was forced to improvise.  He hid in the bathroom of a Toys “R” Us, emerged after closing, and made a secret nest for himself in the store, resting during the day and coming out at night to bathe, stuff himself with candy and exercise in the aisles.  Using the security cameras, he was able to keep watch over the staff’s comings and goings and even learn the passcode for the manager’s computer. 

That’s important, because the manager, Mitch (Peter Dinklage), is an arrogant martinet who lords it over clerks like simple-minded Otis (Emory Cohen).  Jeff takes a special interest in Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), a single mother whose attempts at friendship Mitch rebuffs, and whose requests for toy donations for a church drive he contemptuously rejects.  Jeff decides to take action himself, carting a bag of toys to the church, where gregarious Kami (Kathryn Stamas) insists on introducing him to Pastor Ron (Ben Mendelsohn, in a departure from his usual villainous roles) and his wife Eileen (Uzo Aduba).  Kami also insists that he come to the church’s singles lunch, where he meets Leigh in person.

That’s the start of a serious relationship, with Jeff explaining his mysterious lifestyle by fabricating a secret government job but managing to spend a good deal of time with her and her daughters Lindsay (Lily Collias) and Dee (Kennedy Moyer) after hours.  But while the latter is immediately taken with his geniality and generosity, her older sister is a tougher sell, and it takes a gift of a car with automatic transmission (cue a rambunctious scene with him showing off his recklessness during a test drive with a terrified salesman played by Jimmy O. Yang) to win her over.

The return of Steve changes things; the expense for his services requires a lot of cash, and covering his tracks some dangerous risks, including burning down a dentist’s office, breaking into a pawn shop for a gun, and robbing the Toys “R” Us of its stash of holiday loot in broad daylight—as well as abruptly dropping out of sight to start an entirely new life on Christmas Day, no less.  Disappointing Leigh and her girls in the process leads him to make a choice that proves disastrous.

Cianfrance does a reasonably good job of laying out the simplified trajectory of Manchester’s criminal career he and Gunn have constructed, even if as edited by Ron Patane and Jim Helton their account will probably leave viewers doubtful about how his scheme could ever have succeeded.  He’s also good at teasing out some of the darker aspects of the story, adding little touches of near-tragedy to what’s essentially a lighthearted caper picture.  In that he’s fortunate to have cast Dinklage as the store manager; the actor succeeds in making Mitch less a figure of inexplicable malevolence than a guy with an almost pathetic Napoleonic complex that helps to explain his domineering behavior.

In fact, one leaves understanding Mitch perhaps better than Jeff.  While the film shows what Manchester did pretty well, it’s less successful in delving into why he did it.  The most one can infer is that he held a romantic ideal of domestic life that compelled him to try to be an outstanding husband and father, first to his real family and then to his “adopted” one, even if it meant becoming a criminal to do so.  In the film Steve tries to offer some insight by noting that Jeff is an excellent observer of details but incapable of making good use of that “superpower,” and elsewhere a prison guard opines that he’s smart but also an idiot; but that’s about as deep an analysis as we’re offered.

Fortunately Channing is so ingratiating that it almost doesn’t matter that the character he’s playing remains opaque, and that apart from Dinklage and Stanfield (who makes Steve brutally honest), the rest of the cast, even Dunst as a woman bowled over by Jeff’s charisma until a horrible realization derails her hopes and Mendelsohn as the good-natured pastor come across as rather pallid.  But there are no outright embarrassments among them, and the technical crew—production designer Inbal Weinberg, costumer Erin Benach, cinematographer Andrij Parekh—use the nondescript North Carolina locations to evoke a sense of authentic time and place.  Christophe Bear’s score could have been more assertive–a rare defect nowadays, when the music is usually overbearing.

One’s left with the nagging suspicion that while “Roofman” is a fairly engaging watch, there’s something interesting going on underneath Manchester’s guarded surface that it fails to acknowledge except in the most cursory way, let alone seriously address.

But stick around for the credits, in which the real people in the Manchester saga (save for the man himself) offer their recollections and opinions.