A tale of family secrets that feels a bit like an overlarge group hug
Uncle Frank (95 min) ★★★ ★★
Dir Alan Ball
Starring Paul Bettany, Sophia Lillis, Peter Macdissi, Judy Greer, Steve Zahn, Margo Martindale, Lois Smith, Stephen Root
Since winning the Oscar for American Beauty’s script in 2000, Alan Ball has been a force in TV, having created, in Six Feet Under and True Blood, two of HBO’S most successful and taboo-busting series.
Now he’s back with Uncle Frank, a diverting comedy-drama that deals with forging acceptance in changing times. In spite of Paul Bettany’s brush with notoriety for some distasteful text exchanges made public during the Johnny Depp libel trial, he remains the marquee draw. He plays Frank, a Nixon-era gay college professor not ready to come out to his family . The role is a pleasantly offbeat, sometimes touching use of his talents.
Not just for that reason, he’s the odd man out in this Bledsoe clan, a rambunctious household ruled over by a growling patriarch (Stephen Root) whose open hostility to his eldest son suggests that he, alone, has intuited the truth about Frank’s sexuality. The next to find out is Frank’s bright niece, Beth ( It’s Sophia Lillis), who, in 1973, enrols at New York University, the body of learning where Frank works.
While Frank has duped Beth’s unobservant parents (Judy Greer and
Steve Zahn) into thinking he’s had a girlfriend for five years, Beth discovers he’s actually had a boyfriend – Wally – for 10.
Ball does a nice job sketching Frank and Wally’s home life, and has gone to town in affectionately imagining the bohemian interior of their flat. But the film’s Manhattan interlude is curtailed when the phone rings with bad family news, meaning Frank and Beth must drop everything and go back for the old man’s funeral.
The film hopes to find a new groove on the road trip home. But it gets bogged down. It’s as if Ball didn’t have quite enough faith in the uncle-niece unit to get his story where it wanted to go. Not only is Bettany’s Frank continually troubled by flashbacks to his youthful days fooling around with a buddy, but it turns out this pair are not alone. Wally (Peter Macdissi) has hired another car and stalked them en route, even though Frank expressly forbade him from coming.
Ball’s divided attentions also give short shrift to Beth, for all the efforts of the truly promising Lillis. The other Bledsoes get about a scene apiece to indicate where they sit on the tolerance spectrum. Lois Smith, 90, has some tart moments as Frank’s grandma, and both Greer and the reliably excellent Zahn score well.
The standout, though, is Macdissi, who is warm and funny company. His vulnerability as a Saudi immigrant, who’d be put to death back home as a gay man, is rather more moving than anything Frank is going through. Well-meaning in every direction, Ball’s picture is an overlarge group hug waiting to happen, but it squeezes you amiably enough.