Skip to main contentChoke may be an adaptation of a Chuck Palahniuk novel, but it actually has a number of influences: It is predictably indebted to Fight Club, it intentionally carries echoes of The Last Temptation of Christ, and—probably less deliberately—it feels a lot like the TV show My Name Is Earl. It's this last resemblance that saves the movie.
Translating Palahniuk to the screen is a risky task. (See our handy suggestions on page 31.) The imaginative audacity of his stories is matched by their exaggerated seediness. To call him a provocateur is a gross understatement—he actively dares his readers to throw his books down in queasy disgust. And every time somebody faints at one of his readings, his fans admire him that much more. No wonder he writes so much about support groups.
This is not exactly a surefire recipe for an enjoyable night at the movies. David Fincher pulled off Fight Club only because he's a genius at crafting unsettling images. Clark Gregg, the character actor making his directorial entrance with Choke, is not a genius. His visual style is pedestrian—the kind of middle-distance shots favored by network television. So he's made the best of it, embracing his limitations and turning Choke into a sitcom for the mentally disturbed.
Consider the many ways in which Choke resembles the NBC program My Name Is Earl: It spotlights an adorably skeevy loser, Victor Mancini (Sam Rockwell), whose only friend is an obese simpleton (Brad William Henke, an uncanny twin to Earl's Ethan Suplee) who eventually aids the hero in coming to terms with his past and making amends to the people he's harmed. Of course, in Victor's case the past involves the possibility that he is direct descendent of Jesus of Nazareth, and the people he's harmed are upscale diners whom he's bilked for cash after permitting them to save him from choking to death on chunks of meat he's shoved down his own throat. So I guess the similarities end there. Also, there's the fact that Victor is a sex addict, his mother (Anjelica Huston) is a terminally ill con artist in a mental hospital, and he pays for her care by working as a historical interpreter at a tourist village called Colonial Dunsboro. Oh, and his mother's life depends on him successfully impregnating a doctor (Kelly Macdonald). "I'm trying to fuck you in a church to save my mom's brain," he efficiently summarizes.
So, as I mentioned, there's a lot of potentially tricky material to juggle here. Gregg has in his corner the presence of Rockwell, who is unrivaled at appearing both hopelessly debauched and basically innocent. (So much of his appeal is in his puppy-dog sincerity: Numbed as he might be by satyriasis, he still very earnestly wants to sleep with every one of his conquests.) There's also strong support from Huston—though this is a role she could play in her sleep, and sometimes does—and from Macdonald, who uses her flat-footed, droll line delivery to its best advantage. It takes courage to play an odd character matter-of-factly, and only because she dares it does Choke manage to maintain a smidgen of plausibility (even in the bits about the Holy Foreskin, which I think inadvisable to explain).
But Clark Gregg's wisest decision is to recognize that it's possible to show affection for his characters without taking their circumstances at all seriously. Choke never bothers with social satire—it skips merrily along from one absurd development to the next, its only center Victor's mounting sensation of regret. It's the kind of movie in which the hero has to deliver his one noble speech with his breeches down, since a Dunsboro farm girl has fallen asleep while industriously attempting to give him a hand job. The film also makes a dutiful effort at milking the requisite emotional chords, but, like Victor, it would rather stand in the corner of the barnyard, giggling uncontrollably.
is rated R. It opens Friday at Fox Tower, Cedar Hills, Eastport, Cinetopia, City Center and Lloyd Center.
WWeek 2015