Wow! Mike White! Probably the best performance I have ever seen in any movie about anything. The whole time he's on, you're aware of him and you're aware of yourself and of everyone in the room and everyone you know. Just looking at his face, you instantly realize "I am a crazy perverted maniac and I must be stopped before I do some awful, to myself, to others..." It really is a scary movie. And funny, and sad. The digital video it was shot on makes the look of the movie especially troubling. It's washed out and pasty looking. Watching it makes you feel like you've been in bed masturbating for five years, which I think is precisely what the movie wants you to feel like. This movie is really put together well. Whether it be positive or negative, I guarantee you will feel something, watching this movie, and the feeling will be extreme. It's a rare breed: you can't wait for the movie to be over, and somehow that's a good thing. Brimming over with supreme discomfort and true love, the movie has been unfairly denounced in some circles for equating homosexuality with infantilism and dementia, which is probably the only way critics could think of to get back at the film for making them feel so creepy and weird. It's a character study; clearly the character of Buck was not written to represent the average homosexual man, and it's bewildering that anyone would think of him as a condemnation of the homosexual lifestyle. He is what he is because he hasn't been exposed to anything else. In a way, you can't really even call him a homosexual: He's a Chucksexual. Chuckual? It doesn't matter; the movie is smart, funny, and tremendously well-written. The fact that it was made at all, and found some success, gives one hope for the usually sorry state of movies today. Go track it down.
Review of Chuck & Buck
Chuck & Buck
(2000)
Very well-done. Will make you sick for a wide variety of reasons.
3 January 2001