Mac's errand is a purchase. The film gives him weather, a phone box, a bartender, an old man who owns the beach, and enough time to lose the taste for the deal. Nobody is a yokel. The company is not a cartoon. The magic is low and local, including the Northern Lights, which are not a metaphor so much as a fact he had no room for in Houston. Development that cannot see a place is the soft villain.

Watch it when the house is loud. It rewards attention the way the village does. If you get restless, that restlessness is the thing the film is treating.