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Amazon.co.uk Review
Once upon a time, in a childhood land of lollipops and sleepovers, Chuck and Buck were the best of friends; their days marked out with "fun, fun, fun". The trouble is that Chuck grew up and Buck did not. When the pair are reunited at a family funeral, Chuck (now a thrusting music exec with a pert girlfriend and an apartment in the Hollywood hills) finds himself bothered and bewildered by the creepy lost boy he thought he'd left behind. "I like your house," mumbles Buck, sticking out like a sore thumb at an uptight yuppie party. "It's very old person-y."
Shot on a shoestring budget by Miguel Arteta, Chuck and Buck offers a uniquely rich and strange comedy of retarded childhood. Think of this as a Peter Pan for modern-day America, or the Tom Hanks film Big viewed through a glass darkly. The slender premise contains deep pockets of ambiguity. After all, who's the real victim here? The harassed Chuck (played by American Pie co-creator Chris Weitz) or the spurned, saucer-eyed Buck (Mike White, who also wrote the script)? And who is the hero: the successful, status-conscious professional or the dopey, tearful wild card? Throughout the tale, you find your sympathies swinging back and forth between them.
Make no mistake, Chuck and Buck is alive with hilarious, often horrific set-pieces. Yet Arteta's direction keeps it on a tight leash, prevents it from descending to the level of a simple freak-show. Instead his film blossoms from an odd-couple farce into a drolly provocative (and oddly humane) portrait of that shadow period between infancy and adolescence. White's character comes across as a very human kind of movie monster. Resplendent in stripy T-shirt, Buck is Chuck's conscience, his id, the ghost of childhood come back to haunt him. --Xan Brooks
Dazed and Confused
A wonderfully twisted piece of filmmaking
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
Chuck and Buck grew up together as best friends until Chuck's family moved away when he was eleven. When Buck's mother unexpectedly dies Sixteen years later Buck writes to his childhood friend to invite him to his mother's funeral. Now a successful music executive Chuck returns to attend the funeral only to find after sixteen years apart Buck is emotionally and socially immature and has essentially remained an eleven year old child in a man's body. Embarrassed by the situation Chuck quickly returns back to his fiancé in Los Angeles and ignores any other attempts by Buck to contact him. Shattered by his rejection and his mother's death now making him financially independent, Buck moves to L.A desperate to rekindle their old friendship, which at first becomes a nuisance and soon descends into stalking and blackmail of a shared secret past.
If you're expecting a comedy then you will be hugely disappointed, this is a dark and often uncomfortable film which deals with adolescent homosexual experiences which is very much similar in tone to the work of Todd Solondz. But is you enjoyed films liked 'Happiness' and 'Palindromes' then 'Chuck and Buck' is a touching though uneasy experience.
If you're expecting a comedy then you will be hugely disappointed, this is a dark and often uncomfortable film which deals with adolescent homosexual experiences which is very much similar in tone to the work of Todd Solondz. But is you enjoyed films liked 'Happiness' and 'Palindromes' then 'Chuck and Buck' is a touching though uneasy experience.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:VHS Tape
Creepy, complex story of upwardly mobile young yuppie stalked by his emotionally retarded best
friend from childhood.
Often very funny, but in an intentionally uneasy, uncomfortable way. It's full of unexpected turns
and details, and never opts for the easy or the simple.
Mike White is amazing as the infantile Buck. The other acting is good enough to do the story justice.
Filmed on low-end video, and not great looking, but this is a case where fascinating characters and
rich writing carry the day.
friend from childhood.
Often very funny, but in an intentionally uneasy, uncomfortable way. It's full of unexpected turns
and details, and never opts for the easy or the simple.
Mike White is amazing as the infantile Buck. The other acting is good enough to do the story justice.
Filmed on low-end video, and not great looking, but this is a case where fascinating characters and
rich writing carry the day.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful
Format:DVD
This is one strange film and if you are an "indie" fan, you may like it. My point is that films should make you feel something and this one does more than that. Homosexuality is not the issue here. Child-like stalking and innocence beyond belief are the mainstay concerns. I did feel uncomfortable, empathic, uneasy, sorrowful, giddy and weird all over. This is a real-life movie and that's why people are so squirmish about it. The end will satisy anyone - creepy or normal to the hilt. It is a rare slice of life and sometimes we don't like being reminded that we have a mentally disabled relative.
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