Margot gives it: ★★★
Are we ready to be nostalgic for big-box stores? That’s the question posed by Roofman, a new comedy-drama from cowriter-director Derek Cianfrance (Blue Valentine). The plot may sound like an urban legend, but it’s loosely based on the real case of an escaped convict who spent months hiding out in Toys “R” Us and Circuit City stores in Charlotte, N.C., in 2004 and 2005.
The deal
Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) isn’t much of a book learner, but he’s great at noticing details other people don’t. Encouraged by an old Army buddy (LaKeith Stanfield) to use his “superpower” to win back his estranged family, Jeffrey embarks on a career as a “roofman,” robbing dozens of McDonald’s by breaking in through their flimsy roofs. Being kindhearted, he makes sure the employees are wearing coats before locking them in the walk-in.
The cops eventually catch up with Jeffrey, but he uses his ingenuity to escape from prison. A nearby Toys “R” Us turns out to be the ideal spot to lie low, with sustenance (candy and baby food), entertainment, and nooks where an unsanctioned guest can make himself at home.
Using baby monitors to surveil the employees, Jeffrey takes a shine to plucky single mom Leigh (Kirsten Dunst). When the arrogant store manager (Peter Dinklage) refuses to donate toys to a drive at Leigh’s church, Jeffrey can’t resist venturing out of his hiding place to interfere. He and Leigh hit it off, sending both their lives on a perilous course.
Will you like it?
Roofman’s premise irresistibly combines grit and cuteness. Living in a Toys “R” Us sounds like a down-market version of the children’s classic From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler, in which two runaways squat in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Granted, Jeffrey’s new home is not a temple of culture but a shrine to shoddy consumer goods washed in fluorescent light. His diet is so bad he soon needs a dentist, and he bathes not in a replica Renaissance fountain but in a grubby restroom sink. Still, the scenario has the same primal appeal — especially for our protagonist, who initially turned to crime so he could buy his daughter (Alissa Marie Pearson) the sorts of goodies in which Toys “R” Us abounds.
The film’s best scenes capitalize on the magical strangeness of Jeffrey’s situation: He lives in this paradise of acquisition, making it his nocturnal playground and even meddling in the employees’ lives, yet he can’t enjoy his riches outside its walls without risking capture. Once Jeffrey decides to take that risk, however, Roofman shifts into a new mode, focusing on his evolving relationship with Leigh and his efforts to win over her kids — who, like his own daughter, are fairly easily bought with material goods.
Here is where Cianfrance and cowriter Kirt Gunn have a chance to say something about Americans, consumerism and the throwaway ethos of those cheap, prefab structures that facilitate Jeffrey’s crimes. They try. But the message comes out too tinny to resonate, because it takes the form of Leigh suddenly deciding to lecture Jeffrey on substituting “things” for love. We never learn how materialism rooted itself in Jeffrey’s character or why Leigh seems immune. In every other way, they’re the perfect match: two nice, basic people who just want to live, laugh, love together.
While the film’s first third might lead us to expect a vicious satire or a crowd-pleasing populist comedy, Roofman ends up being more of a tender, tepid love story. In its favor, Tatum and Dunst light up the screen without seeming too much like displaced movie stars. His antic charm, her wry sweetness, Dinklage’s gleeful malice and a few other performances keep us from being bored.
The tension dips as the film goes on, however, and our attention may wander during montages of family bliss. A snappier edit would have kept us on the edge of our seats as we waited for the inevitable outcome of Jeffrey’s misadventures.
I rooted for Roofman because it’s the kind of average Joe saga that has rarely appeared on the big screen since the 1970s (unless you count action movies in which the average Joe turns out to have “special skills” and not be average at all). Interviews with participants in the true story, which accompany the end credits, suggest it could make a great documentary in the right hands.
But, likable as Jeffrey and Leigh are, Roofman never expands outward from them to say much of substance about the mallscape or the society they inhabit. Should we mourn or celebrate the passing of those giant, airy boxes that gave shelter to sparrows and personable escaped felons? The movie gives us plenty of time to muse on that question, but there’s not a lot under its own roof.
If you like this, try…
Blue Valentine (2010; fuboTV, Kanopy, PLEX, Tubi, rentable): Ryan Gosling and Michelle Williams received big award nominations — an Oscar nod in her case — for their roles as a fraying couple in Cianfrance’s breakthrough film.
The Place Beyond the Pines (2012; rentable): Cianfrance told the story of another charismatic criminal supporting his family via robbery — a stunt rider (Gosling) — in this overlong but often exciting drama, set in a gritty Schenectady, N.Y.
Logan Lucky (2017; Kanopy, rentable): Roofman isn’t Tatum’s first role as a working-class guy looking to improve his standard of living through crime. He leads an ensemble cast in Steven Soderbergh’s fun heist caper about a team of misfits plotting to rob the Charlotte Motor Speedway.
This article appears in Oct 15-21 2025.
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