Uncle Kent 2
USA 2015
Written by Kent Osborne
Directed by Todd Rohal
Watched on 19.09.2015

Like 99.9 percent of moviegoers, I’ve never seen “Uncle Kent”. Fortunately, it’s not really necessary in order to watch – and enjoy – the sequel. It starts off with Kent approaching his old buddy Joe Swanberg (who directed the first one, was well as the first couple of minutes of this) with an idea for a sequel, but Joe politely declines, and says that he should go ahead and find another director. After that, we accompany Kent Osborne to San Diego, where he visits Comic-Con, and sooner rather than later, things get really crazy.

I haven’t seen “The Catechism Cataclysm”, but from what I gathered after the “Uncle Kent 2”-screening, this is very much in the same vein. It’s very strange and surreal, starting off with a great, hilarious and visually stunning dream sequence, and later constantly bringing more and more weird, dream- or nightmare-like elements into – seemingly – the real world. At its core is the theory that everything – our lives, our world – is just a simulation, a thought that might have crossed all our minds after we saw “The Matrix”. Then again, it’s equally possible that it’s all in his head, and that his slowly losing his mind. Or maybe, it’s just his imagination running wild while searching for an “Uncle Kent”-sequel. Or is it all a dream? What you should know going in is that “Uncle Kent 2” doesn’t really offer an explanation for what is going on. It’s very much open for interpretation, but I have to say that in this case, it was so surreal, wacky and weird, that the explanation behind it doesn’t really matter to me. I didn’t put much thought into it, either during or after the movie, since in my book, it doesn’t really matter. What matters that I was quite entertained. I thought that this weird mix of different elements had an undeniably charm to it, and there were a couple of scenes that I found quite funny (with the biking accident and the Weird Al-cameo – I’m a huge fan of his – particular standouts). I also liked the setting at San Diego Comic-Con, which – like “Comic-Con Episode IV: A Fan’s Hope” – offered a glimpse into geek-mekka, which I probably will never visit myself (since it’s just too overcrowded for my taste). My only major complaint is the masturbation-scene at the end, since it went on far too long, totally overstaying it’s welcome. It stopped being funny long before it was finally over, and all I could think of was “Dude, would you please finally come?”. Plus, this is arguably more a hodgepodge of ideas, which however don’t necessarily amount to a coherent, convincing whole. Overall, I found “Uncle Kent 2” to be quite charming and funny. If you’re into weird shit, I’d definitely recommend it.
6/10

IMDB