Uncle Frank (2020)

Film: Uncle Frank (2020)

Stars: Paul Bettany, Sophia Lillis, Peter Macdissi, Steve Zahn, Judy Greer, Margo Martindale, Stephen Root, Lois Smith

Director: Alan Ball

Oscar History: No nominations

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

2020 had a number of films focusing on queer characters played by straight actors.  Kate Winslet, Henry Golding, James Corden, and here Paul Bettany have all stepped into that line, risking potential public backlash by participating in a longtime Hollywood practice that has come under scrutiny, particularly when you compare these actors' careers with the (relatively small) list of publicly-out LGBT performers who don't have the same status as they do.  I have been relatively standoffish on this conversation, as I do think actors "should be able to act" and I don't (as a queer person) generally find someone pretending to be gay to be particularly offensive.  But it's hard to escape this conversation when it comes to a movie like Uncle Frank, starring a straight man but directed & written by an openly gay man (Alan Ball), as something feels just a little bit off throughout all of the movie.

(Spoilers Ahead) It's 1973, and Beth Bledsoe (Lillis) has just moved from small-town South Carolina to New York, to attend NYU.  The only person she knows there is her Uncle Frank (Bettany), a professor who has a hands-off relationship with his family, but has a soft spot for Beth.  It becomes apparent pretty quickly to oblivious Beth that Frank is gay, and living with his longtime partner Wally (Macdissi).  After Frank's father (and Beth's grandfather) Daddy Mac (Root) dies suddenly, Frank, Beth, and Wally retreat to South Carolina, to mourn him, and in the process Frank comes to terms with his homosexuality, and, after being outed ruthlessly in his father's will reading, introduces Wally to his loving & accepting family.

Uncle Frank is really slight-at 95 minutes, it has at least forty minutes of filler, and this is a result of taking a troupe of solid actors (that cast list is very good) & giving them two-dimensional portrayals to bring to life.  None of the actors here are stretching-this feels like a paycheck job, even for Judy Greer (who is the best in the cast as a somewhat-silly but sweet sister-in-law to Frank).  Martindale, Root, Zahn...all of them are playing stereotypes they know by heart, and while Bettany hasn't played a Frank before, he doesn't really understand him.  There's no sense that Frank existed outside of what we see onscreen, there's too little consideration for these conversations, ones he (as a gay man) would have at least practiced 100 times in his head.

The weird thing is that there's tons of backstory in these parts even as written, but neither the actors nor Ball-as-director wants to pursue them.  There's an abject cruelty in Root's Daddy Mac that the script doesn't acknowledge as he viciously outs his son, and Zahn's Mike is emotionally abusive to his wife.  There are scenes where Beth interacts with her classmates in a way that shows their shortened worldview, but also either feel to be mocking these rural Southerners or want to point to them as some sort of problem (without saying it out loud).  There's a scene early in the film where Beth discusses an erotic scene in Mario Puzo's book The Godfather (confession-this was the first "sex scene" I ever read in a book, and remember being 13 & totally scandalized), and there's absolutely no connection to the rest of the movie...except a strange callback from the same woman bragging about her husband's genitalia later on in the movie.  This is the sort of weird touches that Ball gives this movie, but doesn't follow through with in the plot.  It occasionally feels like the sort of gay film a straight person would write...except Ball is gay & should know better.  As a result, Uncle Frank is pleasant but broad, convoluted, & kind of a waste.