Archive listings for Chuck and Buck

Observer (11Jan01): The ultra-low budget Chuck and Buck is a curious, gay-stalker movie. Buck (Mike White), a 27-year-old with the behaviour patterns of a child, invites Chuck (Chris Weitz), the schoolfriend he hasn't seen for 15 years, to his mother's funeral. Chuck, after rejecting Buck's gay advances, returns to Los Angeles, where he's a successful pop music producer with a sympathetic fiancée. But he's then relentlessly pursued by the squirmingly embarrassing Buck. We anticipate acts of violence. Instead, Buck writes a fairy tale play called Hank and Frank and strikes up a benign friendship with the middle-aged Hispanic woman (Lupe Ontiveros) who produces it at a children's theatre. Chuck and Buck is an oddity from some very clever writers, accompanied by a 12-minute short by some other clever people. Paul Merton's The Suicidal Dog is a misanthropic comedy about the revenge enacted on a dislikeable, lower-middle-class Londoner by his neglected wife and his neutered terrier. The film is photographed by Britain's greatest Technicolor cameraman, the 86-year-old Jack Cardiff, who made his screen debut 82 years ago at the age of four and makes a fleeting appearance here at a funfair.