Uncle Kent (2011)

Kent (Kent Osborne) is a recently turned 40 year cartoonist, in search of something beyond his usual mundane existence, so in order to add some spice to his life he turns to website Chatroulette where he makes the acquaintance of Kate (Jennifer Prediger). As conversation soon moves from the normal to sex, both soon start to realise they are looking for different things.

Uncle Kent is a movie that many will struggle to make it passed the first few minutes, a slow set of scenes, set against an abysmal musical score (that does nothing for the feature) really grate on the nerves. You certainly need to have a hard going constitution to survive, and if you do make it passed you might not be disappointed with the results. This is a very slow paced feature that is not going to endear itself to anyone who likes a little flesh on the bone so to speak.

Uncle Kent in many ways feels a little like a snapshot into normal life, a normal life that is with a heavy influence of computer/internet technology. You cannot help but have a level of empathy for the character of Kent, and if you have ever been single, you may well feel for his level of desperation.

This is a strange movie that somewhere along the lines moves from being a very innocent feature to something far more adult. The jump is quite quick, and once you have made the jump, the change is fairly consistent from there on out. Suddenly there is great emphasis on nudity, masturbation, and taboo subjects, this then leads on to slightly less graphic, although reasonably titillating ménage a trois, between Kent, Kate and someone they meet off Craigslist.

When you drive passed a car crash, you don’t want to look, but cant help yourself, this is the ultimate way to describe Uncle Kent; its very much one of those movies that you feel you can take or leave, its also one of those “nothing very much happened today” kind of movies. No matter how bland the storyline feels, sometimes in major ways, you just can’t help but carry on watching. You do indeed feel a sort of kinship for the leading character, his plight, and lack of real life pleasure.

Uncle Kent was obviously made for very little, one could suspect that everything in the movie is filmed in or around the actors/producers own properties; there are limited outdoor scenes. Yet Uncle Kent has succeed where so many others have failed, it uses the notion that sex sells, and parades the three main characters laying on a bed together in their underwear in all the publicity material, to ensure that it gains interest.  It also had the added bonus of making it to Sundance in 2011, an accreditation that was sure to gain the movie a certain level of credibility.