Choke

Here is a movie that could have been a real winner, if only it was more focused on what it wants to be. Choke seems to want to be a lot of things. It wants to be a raunchy comedy about sex addicts. It sometimes wants to be a heartfelt drama about a son watching his mother slipping away. It sometimes wants to be a thought-provoking look at how past experiences can shape a man. Choke wants to be all of these things, but it never quite settles on a consistent tone or structure. Despite some bright moments and a strong lead performance from the always reliable Sam Rockwell, Choke never quite clicks.

Rockwell plays Victor, a sex addict who spends most of his time making love with any woman willing, and the rest of his time in a dead-end job working as a costumed tour guide at an early America-themed education center for children. He goes to meetings to help his sex addiction with his best friend Denny (Brad William Henke), a chronic masturbater, but Victor still finds himself stealing off to the men's room during meetings to have a quick fling with one of the girls in the group. Rather than getting help for his problem, Victor seems more concerned about helping his ailing mother, Ida (Anjelica Huston), who is suffering from dementia and doesn't even remember who he is anymore. To raise money for Ida's hospital care, Victor frequently pulls a scam where he goes to a restaurant and forces himself to choke on the food. When someone saves his life, he strikes up a relationship with that person, who usually gives him money out of pity. It's been a pretty good life for Victor, but it's brought to a halt when he meets a young doctor at the hospital named Paige Marshall (Kelly Macdonald). He doesn't recognize the feelings of genuine love building within him, since he's only familiar with lust, and he finds himself confused. As he looks for answers, he searches deep into his dysfunctional childhood with his mother.

We witness this childhood through flashbacks, where a 12-year-old Victor (played by Jonah Bobo) lives a life constantly on the road, as his mother and him constantly flee from the law, and live sort of like traveling gypsies, going from place to place at a moment's notice. We learn that Ida was somewhat of an anarchist in her younger years, such as the scene when she tells her son they're going to a zoo, not telling him she's planning to have them both break into the zoo late at night and free all the animals. We also get a hint that Ida is not his birth mother, such as the flashback when they are eating at a diner, and young Victor just happens to see his own face on the milk carton the waitress hands him. These flashback sequences are certainly interesting to watch, but oddly have very little to do with the actual film itself. They almost start to feel like a completely separate entity, as writer-director Clark Gregg never quite figures out a way to turn the movie into a coherent whole.

And yet, it is the mother-son relationship that earns the best material, as well as the best performances. Oddly enough, this relationship is stronger than any of the romantic and sexual ones that Victor experiences during the course of the film. A lot of this is due to the performances. Sam Rockwell and Anjelica Huston have a heartbreaking and sweet chemistry together during their scenes in the hospital. He has to put up with her calling him a different name every time she sees him (she usually refers to him as "Fred"), and sometimes has to deal with her mistaking someone else for him. I wanted to know more about these characters, and about how Victor feels about his mother, and her current condition. The movie never quite goes deep enough into these characters and their relationship, leaving them as interesting but still half-finished shells that needed to be fleshed out more.

The material that is more hit and miss deals with Victor's relationships outside of his mother. While some of the sex comedy is quite funny, the movie never quite builds to a complete whole, due to the fact that this aspect is somewhat half-hearted in how it's been written. The screenplay once again never quite goes deep enough into the relationships and the characters. Victor's relationship with the doctor at the hospital seems forced, almost as if they are falling in love because the movie requires them to. We never get a true connection with them. Worse of all, when a big revelation is made about Paige near the end of the film, the movie forgets to give Victor time to truly react, and he takes the news with what can only be called casual stride. Many of the film's subplots, such as Denny striking up a relationship with a stripper at a local bar, are curiously underwritten and lack any sort of payoff.

Choke is a very odd and uneven movie that I admired from time to time. Some of the stuff, especially the material concerning Victor and Denny's job at the theme park, is quite funny. (I liked their boss, who speaks in old English even when he's not on the job.) But the screenplay as a whole is too underwritten to grab me, and I felt myself constantly detached. Despite the strong performances, the characters never come across as real people. This is a missed opportunity all around, and a movie that should have been better than it is.

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