Movie Review - Uncle Frank (2020)

This is the third feature from Alan Ball as screenwriter. It's his second as director. Ball won the Academy Award for Best Writing for his work on American Beauty (1999). After that, he started working in television, which has been his main domain. He created the HBO series Six Feet Under (2001), which allowed him to start directing. He helmed a feature film for the first time with Towelhead (2008). That film wasn't as well received as American Beauty. Ball returned to TV, creating the hit HBO series True Blood (2008). He's done several TV projects in the interim, but, now he's back at a theatrical feature with this film about a gay man returning home to confront his conservative family.

It's basically a coming-out narrative, a narrative that is at this point very cliché and hackneyed. A man living in a city like New York who then travels home to a southern, Midwestern or rural area and that has to reveal to his family that he's gay has been done to death. Usually, the man has to return due to some event, either tragic or festive. In fact, the same week that this film was released nationwide, Hulu released Happiest Season (2020), which is another coming-out narrative but distinguishes itself by being about lesbians and more focused around the Christmas holiday.

Paul Bettany (Avengers: Age of Ultron and A Beautiful Mind) stars as Francis MacKenzie Bledsoe, Jr. aka Frank, a 46-year-old college professor in 1969. He lives and works in Manhattan. However, that's not where he was born and raised. He was actually born and raised in a backwoods town in South Carolina. When we first meet Frank, it's at his father's birthday. The entire family has gathered, including his parents and his siblings, which include two sisters and a younger brother. All of his siblings have spouses and children of their own. Frank is the only one who doesn't. He's also the only one who seems not to have the approval of his father. It's not clear why at first, but one can soon guess.

Everybody in the family notices this, but no one ever asks or talks about why there is this tension between Frank and his father. Even if people did ask or talk about it, we don't see it at first because this film is told largely from another person's point-of-view. Frank eventually becomes not only the titular character but the protagonist for the most part. However, that's not how the film starts. The film starts with voice-over narration from Frank's niece. Yes, it's another cliché, as well as a kind of truism, that every family and a lot of people have a gay uncle. This film just makes that the literal case in terms of the presumed protagonist here.

Sophia Lillis (Sharp Objects and It) co-stars as Beth Bledsoe, the niece of Frank. She's his younger brother's eldest child. It's strange because Beth isn't her birth name. Beth's birth name is Betty, but Beth changed her name. She did so as a show of her breaking away from her roots and expressing her individuality, almost as a feminist statement of not being defined by backwoods culture. She wants to be like her uncle and escape South Carolina and make a more metropolitan life in New York City.

Unfortunately, I would argue that Beth as a character is rather unnecessary. At first, she seems like she's a device to introduce us to Frank. The film jumps to 1973 when Beth has moved to Manhattan and is attending the same college where Frank is a teacher. It's there that she discovers that he's gay. It seems as if she's then going to be the first family member to whom Frank admitted his true sexuality and through her, she would re-introduce him back to the family. Narrative-wise, that's basically what happens, but not really, as it's revealed that Frank's sister knew he was gay, probably before Beth was even born. Therefore, Beth's relationship to Frank isn't unique, but, even if it were, functionally she doesn't really aide Frank all that much. She just becomes a passive observer to all that's happening.

Peter Macdissi (True Blood and Six Feet Under) also co-stars as Wally, the boyfriend to Frank. Wally has been involved with Frank for 10 years. They even live together in Manhattan. Both are openly gay in the city, but they are both closeted to their families. Wally is an aeronautics engineer, but he's also a religious man, a practicing Muslim, as he's Arab and probably from a Muslim country, possibly Lebanon. However, it's revealed he immigrated to the United States to escape persecution for being gay. Thankfully, Wally is a more lively, engaging and active character than Beth.

The film would've been better off ditching Beth as a character and focusing more on Wally. We get hints of his relationship with his family and what he escaped and has to go through being in his position. Yet, the film only hints at Wally's life without ever really diving deeper into it. Too much time is wasted on Beth and her relationship with a boy who ends up being a lecherous sycophant in what turns out to be a ridiculous subplot that made no sense.

Actually, as this film went along, it started to feel derivative of everything that Ball has done before. Frank is prompted to return home due to his father's passing. Frank then attends his father's funeral and because Six Feet Under was about a family of funeral directors, I couldn't help but think of Ball's Emmy-winning series when Frank got to his father's funeral. The distinction is that even in the first episode of Six Feet Under, the family members are better-drawn and even fleshed-out to a far better degree than the family members here. It's a shame because Margo Martindale plays Frank's mother and I was hoping she would be this film's version of Frances Conroy in Six Feet Under. Conroy was fantastic in that series because she's given room to be. Martindale isn't given that much room here. This film doesn't take the time for us to get to know her or much of the other family. The film dawdles on a road trip, which is just the film spinning its wheels with Beth. It's not to say the road trip part should have been excised, but Ball could've added more time with the family.

Rated R for sexuality, drug use and language.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 35 mins.

Available on Amazon Prime.