What to Stream: Mike White Stalks His Past in 'Chuck & Buck'
Chuck & Buck (2000) Amazon Instant, iTunes
The Basics: A dark, cringe-comedy-drama starring Mike White and Chris Weitz; directed by Miguel Arteta
If You Liked: Welcome to the Dollhouse, Rushmore, and Ghost World
The Nugget: A man stuck in perpetual adolescence pursues his obsession with a childhood fling who has very much moved on.
Actor, director, writer, and producer Mike White has done everything from compete on The Amazing Race to create the much-mourned Laura Dern series Enlightened. But one of the earliest glimpses of his multi-faceted talent was this squirmy treasure that he wrote and stars in as a bizarre man-child who shows up on the doorstep of his close friend from childhood (Weitz), expecting that they can resume their youthful dalliances. It’s a straight-out stalker scenario that seems on the brink of tilting into horror territory for much of the movie’s first half, but Chuck & Buck eventually becomes a sensitive and heart-rending look at the arrested development of Generation X and how the deepest wounds of youth can never quite be healed. Watch out for the sequence in which White’s character stages a play based on the fling in a masterpiece of cringe comedy.
Photo credit: © Everett Collection
