Don’cha just hate when a movie looks like it’s going to be really amazing and show a side of life that you’ve never seen before, only to whip a 180 and bore you to tears?  Well, if that’s you then At Any Price doesn’t have much to recommend it; it’s a film that starts off with all sorts of promise only to get mired in so many “important messages” that it loses itself and it’s audience.

Henry Whipple (Dennis Quaid) is a corn farmer in Iowa.  He’s also a salesman for GMO (genetically modified organisms) corn seed, and is making a pretty darn good living at it.  Son Dean Whipple (Zac Efron) is the obligatory kid who wants to get out of the sticks, and he’s got a good chance of that thanks to his skill at auto racing.  When the Whipples aren’t busy squeezing Charmin with the farm, they’re doing the usual things that folks in Corn Country seem to do in movies; party out in the middle of nowhere, cheat on their wife with the secretary/former prom queen, drive to the nearest town (two hours away) to steal stuff, and try to cheat the system.  But for Henry and Dean things start to fall apart, and when they do you know it’s going to affect everyone around them.

Director/screenwriter Ramin Bahrani does a brilliant job in the first hour of this film.  Sadly, before too long At Any Price starts to take on more topics and problems than it can juggle.  If it had been a film about the farm industry and how patented GMO seed can wreck folks, it would have worked.  If it had been a film about how a kid makes good by riding his stock car to fame, that would have worked.  If it had been about one man’s troubles coming home to roost, and how the chain of problems are now working on the son, that would have worked.  But At Any Price lumps all that together and then some.  And that makes for a confusing, dull film.  How can a film with all that be dull, you ask?  When there’s so much stuff going on, you can’t focus on anything, and then the hopping from one topic to the next to the next and back again becomes an endurance test rather than an engaging series of events.

That’s a shame, because Efron is definitely coming into his own as an actor.  Even during the most muddled bits of At Any Price, his talent does shine through.  Standing up with actors like Dennis Quaid and Heather Graham (as the secretary/former prom queen Quaid’s Henry is schtupping), Efron manages to hold his own.  I’m intersted in seeing how he fairs in this year’s JFK docudrama Parkland.

“Expand or die” is the mantra of the farmers in At Any Price.  If you don’t get bigger — and take advantage of the modern scientific and technological marvels — you’ll destruct.  Unfortunately with At Any Price, having more twists and turns than Figure Eight Racing just weighs down the film.  I mourn for what could have been.