Movie Breakdown: Uncle Frank (Noah)
Pre-Screening Stance:
As someone who has never been able to get past the second season of Six Feet Under and has never been able to get past the second episode of True Blood, a full length Alan Ball film doesn’t exactly glisten with anticipation. That said, Sophia Lillis is one of the great young actors coming up right now, Paul Bettany rarely does any wrong and the trailer made it seem quirky and beautifully shot.
Post-Screening Ramble:
I get bagged on a lot for not liking feel-good films. And, truth be told, this isn’t that off of a statement – I don’t really like feel good films because most of the time, feel good films are trite, broadly painted bits of cloying pap that push stereotypical characters and underdeveloped narratives into the gaping mouths of a viewing public, seemingly so starved for “uplifting” content, they chug it down and ask for another. And so, yeah, I’m not often a fan of “feel good.” Sadly, Alan Ball’s Uncle Frank, isn’t a feel good film that breaks the mold. It is not a film that I’m a fan of. Paul Bettany plays Uncle Frank, a gay man living out and proud in New York City, who is pulled back to the stifling oppression of his small-town southern family when his father (Stephen Root) – a truly horrendous bundle of cold-eyed hatred – dies of a heart attack. His hip-to-his-secret niece Beth (Sophia Lillis) joins him on a roadtrip to the funeral and after his boyfriend Wally shows up, well, everything comes to a head. It is one of those films that has all the pieces – a solid director, a great cast, beautiful camerawork – but it can’t do the hard work of cobbling them together into anything more than a paper thin, afterschool special about the dangers of homophobia and how love changes everything. Bettany’s Uncle Frank is the only character given any depth (and aside from “closeted gay man” and “recovering alcoholic” – it’s not much) while the rest of the family’s screen time is so limited (I think Margo Martindale has three minutes of screen time where she isn’t crying) that when the come-to-gay-Jesus moments shift the family dynamics and everyone has to react, to change, it doesn’t stick because we don’t know any of these characters well enough to give a shit. Instead, Ball’s film shoehorns every trope onto the table and expects the audience to take them as character development. Stranger still, the audience’s avatar – Beth – doesn’t have a story. She’s a voyeur on Uncle Frank’s character but because she’s posited as the audience’s eyes on the prize, she’s forced into the story time and time again without anything to do but comment on Uncle Frank’s easily understood situation. It limits Lillis’ range and pulls the audience away from what they should be focusing on. So yeah, I don’t love this film, but not because it’s feel-good, but because it’s poorly made and poorly put together and uses the feel good aspects as a thin coat of paint to cover up all its other flaws. Give me a feel good flick with a strong narrative and interesting characters and a story that does something interesting with them, hell, I’ll love the shit out of feel good flick.
One Last Thought:
There’s a character they show at the very end of the film for a brief moment at a crucial scene that I had me turning to my girlfriend and asking, “Who is that person?” That’s the type of the movie this is.
