‘Bucky F*cking Dent’ Review: David Duchovny Directs and Stars in a Winning Story of Fathers, Sons, Baseball and Death
variety.comOwen Gleiberman Chief Film Critic “Bucky F*cking Dent,” the second movie written and directed by David Duchovny (the first was “House of D,” in 2004), is based on a novel by Duchovny that was published in 2016, and whether or not the story is autobiographical, it feels autobiographical, and I mean that as a compliment.
Set in the summer of 1978, it’s framed around one man’s obsession with the Boston Red Sox — meaning, of course, the curse of the Bambino, going back to 1918, the last time (until 2004) the Sox won the championship.
The man is Ted Fulilove, which is a terrible last name for a movie character, though he’s played by Duchovny as a cussed crab apple with an amusing misanthropic put-down for every occasion (like: “Closure’s for morons”). “Bucky F*cking Dent” has a handful of characters, but it’s essentially a father-son two-hander — one of those dramadies in which the dad is a heartless-on-the-surface coot who was no good when it came to how he treated his family, and the son is a lot nicer and more sensitive, but maybe too sensitive (as a correction to all that paternal dickishness).
Which also means that he’s lost. Back in 1986, Tom Hanks and Jackie Gleason had a field day with this sort of thing in “Nothing in Common,” a movie that was instrumental in establishing Hanks’ serious dramatic chops.
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