Choke (2008)

an erotic gospel for the secular age

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11/21/08

‘Choke’ never manages to be as edgy, amusing, insightful or plain messy as you’d hope it would be, especially considering its ‘naughty’ promotional poster and the distribution of anal beads as a marketing device.

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11/21/08

Uneven and oddly compromised in tone, Choke is a competent enough black comedy, but in the shadow of that other film, it never shines.

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11/21/08

Choke is a confused sex comedy by Clark Gregg that blunders around for 90-odd minutes trying to look butch and sensitive.

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11/21/08

For all its flaws and fumbles there is a certain guilty pleasure in Choke.

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11/21/08

This adaptation of a novel by American provocateur Chuck Palahniuk is profane, offensive and obscene, and packed with balefully weak jokes.

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11/21/08

Choke was never going to win any prizes for subtlety, but by toning down Palahniuk’s nastier absurdities in favour of obvious laughs, Gregg’s adaptation is no more provocative than the average Carry On film.

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11/21/08

But his sterility and romantically curved plot, twisted as it might be, feel respectively reductive and pat next to Palahniuk’s fast, filthy and scabrous satirical stabs.

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11/21/08

It's hard to know what aspect is the most offensive: the glib, cynical approach to mental illness; the sleazy sexism; the infantile attempts at blasphemy; or Rockwell's smug, boorish performance.

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11/21/08

Palahniuk’s novels are so wilfully quirky, so egocentric, so out there, that transferring them to the screen must be like using chopsticks to transport a blancmange across a room.

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11/21/08

All this madness provides amusing moments, but the full-throttle absurdities become too difficult to swallow.

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11/21/08

The whole movie is dying, actually. But it puts on a brave face and gratefully receives visitors.

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11/21/08

An uneven take on Palahniuk’s fourth novel, Rockwell and Huston shining brightly enough to eclipse a patchy directorial debut.

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11/21/08

Sharper direction and a less throwaway tone would have allowed it to add up to more.

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11/21/08

Enjoyable, blackly comic drama with a great script and a terrific central performance by Sam Rockwell.

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11/20/08

The many opportunities to send up sex and psychiatry are thrown away when the film gets serious about Victor's bond with his mum. We are Freud alive.

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11/20/08

There are plenty of interesting and unusual elements in this very strange film, but in the end it seems that whatever special spirit was present in Palahniuk's book has eluded Gregg and his collaborators.

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11/07/08

I found it choppy, I found it dull, I found it disinteresting.

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11/05/08

This movie is only marginally enjoyable.

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11/05/08

I laughed. I thought it bizarrely funny, but the laughter can become uneasy.

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10/31/08