Search

Chuck & Buck

2000, Movie, R, 96 mins

Chuck & Buck: Review

CHUCK & BUCK
starstarstarstar
Combine Todd Solondz's rueful affection for life's weirdos with the queasy comic appeal of Adam Sandler's baby-man characters, and you have this creepy, sort-of stalker comedy. Buck O'Brien (screenwriter Michael White, supervising producer of TV's Freaks and Geeks), 27, still lives with his ailing mother in the suburban house where he grew up, or more properly, failed to grow up. When his mother dies, Buck invites childhood best friend Chuck Sitter (AMERICAN PIE producer Chris Weitz) to the funeral, and attempts to rekindle their intense prepubescent closeness. But Chuck — now Charlie — a high-powered, LA music-industry executive with a polished fiancee named Carlyn (Beth Colt), isn't interested in reintroducing the socially maladroit Buck into his life, and he's especially not interested in resuming the precocious sex games they played as kids. With the persistence of a child and the wherewithal of an adult (a naïve one, anyway), Buck moves to Los Angeles and pursues Chuck relentlessly. Rebuffed, he writes an unsettling play called "Hank & Frank" that casts their personal history in warped fairy tale terms, and produces it at a local playhouse with a hopelessly inept actor (Paul Weitz, AMERICAN PIE's director and Chris Weitz' brother) who reminds him of Chuck in the lead. Shot on digital video and directed by Miguel Arteta (of the equally squirm-inducing STAR MAPS), this hard-to-categorize picture is a bracing antidote to Hollywood's usual positioning of Forrest Gump-style man-children as holy innocents: Buck is an alarming combination, emotionally childlike, but with a man's desires and capabilities. White and Arteta's remarkable achievement lies in making Buck and Chuck equally comprehensible, even if neither can really be called sympathetic. Arteta wrings some laughs from their bizarre (and more than a little frightening) situation, but they're uncomfortable laughs, emotional protection from the freak show. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
Advertisement

Shop

Chuck & Buck
Buy Chuck & Buck from Amazon.com
From Lions Gate (DVD)
Average Customer Review: nostarnostarnostarhalfstarstar
Usually ships in 24 hours
Buy New: $13.49

more Chuck & Buck products

Advertisement

Most Popular TV Shows

  1. Dancing with the Stars
  2. The Game
  3. NCIS
  4. American Idol
  5. Wife Swap
more popular tv shows

Most Popular Celebrities

  1. Tiger Woods
  2. Pamela Bach
  3. Heidi Klum
  4. Jake Gyllenhaal
  5. Reese Witherspoon
more popular celebrities

Most Popular Movies

  1. The Twilight Saga: New Moon
  2. The Blind Side
  3. 2012
  4. Old Dogs
  5. A Christmas Carol
more popular movies

Top Videos

  1. The View
  2. Nip/Tuck
  3. Desperate Housewives
  4. V
  5. NCIS
more top videos