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Uncle Frank Movie Review

Uncle Frank is a 2020 drama film directed by Alan Ball and starring Paul Bettany and Sophia Lillis. It’s a well acted and moving, but ultimately problematic movie.

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“Nice always hides something.

What’s hidden is what’s interesting“

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Accompanied by his teenage niece, a gay literature professor reluctantly returns home to attend his father’s funeral. This is a polarizing film that consists of two very different parts that are also quite uneven in quality. Let’s first state the positives. I liked the road trip elements here, unfortunately they were sparse, but those that we got were great as the interactions between the three main characters were a lot of fun.

I also found the flashbacks rather moving actually. They were elegant and very melancholic in feel. The turmoil in Frank’s head was so well explored and the film painfully depicts how homophobia in the family can lead to unhappy destructive life, even self-hate as evidenced by that one truly powerful scene where he calls his partner “a faggot”.

However, other elements were uniformly bad in my estimation. The drinking habit was just thrown in there for good measure and I found it utterly unnecessary and underutilized. Even worse is the family. They are very thinly realized and all are rather unrealistic. That ending where they suddenly accept Frank for who he is rang so false that it really hurt the entire movie that came before it as it significantly lessened the trauma and pain that Frank went through. It was a happy ending that was just stacked there for no reason other than to make the whole film more conventional. It was a really bad choice that backfired horrendously.

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But still, Uncle Frank remains a solid gay movie with very emotional scenes interspersed throughout its short runtime. The movie is fun and breezy while also being dark and very tragic. I liked the three main characters a lot. Peter Macdissi is quite good as the sweet and fun Wally, Sophia Lillis is reliably terrific as Beth and Paul Bettany is absolutely fantastic as the titular Frank. He sold his every emotion in what has to be one of the year’s finest performances.