Choke - C-

On DVD 92 minutes.

Novelist Chuck Palahniuk must love group therapy sessions. In the first third of Fight Club, the narrator and Marla Singer crashed support groups helping victims of cancer and other maladies (sickle cell disease, tuberculosis) to feel alive. In Choke, Victor (Sam Rockwell) is a genuine sex addict who attends sessions to bang nymphomaniacs rather than to be cured. His dying mother (Angelica Huston) is being treated for Alzheimer’s at a long-term facility, supervised by a caring and comforting doctor (Kelly MacDonald). Victor gets much of his money from pretending to choke at restaurants and having wealthy patrons save him. He is having an early mid-life crisis and thinks finding his biological father will fix him. The trouble is . . .

there’s not one likable trait in Victor, especially his penchant for anal beads. And you won't care about him or anything he does. It’s impossible to believe that every single female character (other than Huston, thankfully) wants to get into his diseased pants. Actor Clark Gregg (from many Mamet films and TV’s "The New Adventures of Old Christine") writes and directs (for the first time) and the film looks cheaply shot and lit. There’s nothing interesting about the framing, music, editing, or plot twists. The film has something important to say about identity and finding one’s purpose toward the end, but the brilliant Adaptation. came to a similar conclusion over 6 years ago. The novel must have had more interesting ideas and subplots, but everything feels rushed and disorganized here. Rockwell has been pretty good in supporting roles (The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Matchstick Men), but struggles mightily when given the lead (Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Hitchhike’s Guide to the Galaxy). The film’s a big, but not surprising, disappointment. C-