Apple TV+’s The Mosquito Coast is a Saga of Tone-Deaf Tourism | TV/Streaming

Created by Neil Cross and Tom Bissell, “The Mosquito Coast” (available on April 30) re-imagines the contemporary, mini-van driving family as anti-capitalists whose American dream is that of escape. After six different identities over nine years, the Foxes live off the grid, collecting food grease for fuel, home-schooling their kids, and hiding from the authority figures that they do not trust. Their home is a happy alternative California existence of calm blues and sunny yellows, so long as the outside world doesn’t provide cracks, like with daughter Dina’s development of a relationship with a boy that goes against the rules: no cell phones, no traces. The father, Justin Theroux’s Allie Fox, is a brilliant mind who has created a machine that turns fire into ice, a process shown to us in a snazzy inside-the-machine sequence that introduces other swooping shots from initial director Rupert Wyatt. But because no one wants to invest that product, and he has to remain anonymous, he does custodial work at a food factory where his boss drives a tacky convertible, and barely pays him. The house is in foreclosure, according to some mail Allie tries to hide from his family. As much as Allie has tried to live his life serving no master but his ego, it’s ending soon. And then the cops show up. 

There’s an electric paranoia to the first couple episodes of “The Mosquito Coast,” which director Wyatt accentuates with breathtaking wide shots of waste, contrasted with a frantic getaway in the pilot episode. The show convinces us that it’s not the family who is crazy, but the structures they have been trying to avoid for years; these are not antiheroes who bend the law when they need, so much as free-thinking heroes. To protect this ideology, they go on the run and head toward Mexico, seeking refuge with the help of a dark web figure known as Calaca. Theroux’s way with words and science becomes their guiding light out of sticky situations and eventually to the border and over it; so does their stock of money, which Allie uses just as cunningly as any other confident American capitalist. With a role that can be so precious, Theroux at least conveys the intensity as someone who believes what he is selling, while being unaware that he himself is actually a smooth salesman who usually gives others a raw deal. And Theroux strikes a unique balance of being a TV version of a know-it-all dad, who can rig gears, electronics, and the like, but does so with a reckless stubbornness and mania. 

In its design of the family, “The Mosquito Coast” replicates a classic nuclear family formula but without a sharp sense of irony. Theroux’s dad will do something radical, the obedient son Charlie (Gabriel Bateman) will go along with it in awe, and usually the situation causes the mother Margot (Melissa George) to state intently, which is the serious-drama equivalent of Marge Simpson’s annoyed grumble, like she’ll do something about this mess, but later. This ease in dynamics can turn the family into a type of emotional gruel, which is why the daughter Dina (Logan Polish) is the most interesting character. From the beginning she calls her dad out on his “Jim Jones bullshit” and questions the family’s way of life that nearly sabotages it. And yet there’s still something programmed in her that has her sounding just like her dad when pressed from outside forces, vomiting paragraphs about how capitalism throws away those who don’t consume.