Uncle Kent

Filmmaker Joe Swanberg’s sixth feature, Uncle Kent follows a 40-year-old cartoonist (Kent Osborne’s Kent) as he invites a Chatroullette friend (Jennifer Prediger’s Kate) to stay at his house for the weekend – with the movie subsequently (and primarily) detailing the pair’s aimless exploits. Swanberg has infused Uncle Kent with a pervasively low-rent feel that prevents the viewer from connecting with the central character’s plight on an all-too-frequent basis, which, in turn, ensures that the film’s improvisatory atmosphere becomes interminable virtually from the word go. The movie’s shot-on-the-cheap sensibilities effectively exacerbate its various problems, as Swanberg’s distractingly inept directorial choices are reflected in everything from the shoddy visuals to the lackadaisical pacing to the excessively subdued performances. (Even the soundtrack suffers from Swanberg’s penny-pinching modus operandi, with the hollow, tinny sound design, coupled with the actors’ tendency to mumble, rendering many of the film’s conversations unintelligible.) And although Swanberg has peppered the narrative with a handful of admittedly truthful sequences – ie Kent engages in a frank conversation about the perils of dating at 40 with a friend – Uncle Kent is, for the most part, the latest underwhelming drama from a man who stubbornly refuses to grow as a filmmaker (ie even Kevin Smith followed up Clerks with the comparatively ambitious Mallrats).

*1/2 out of ****