Uncle David

I've seen plenty of gay-themed movie and I am a gay man and this was absolutely one of the worst (I say "one of" to be kind but I honestly can't remember a worse movie.) Some of the dialogue is inaudible due to poor sound quality (e.g. they're talking over the sound of airplanes but the airplanes are louder.) There is very little plot and no story line to follow. No beautiful scenes. Nothing. No redeeming qualities at all. The premise of a gay man interested in his nephew might have been developed into something but it is not. The two men are just that: two men trying to make a living by making a low budget piece of crap that maybe some desperate gay film festies will use as filler. Don't even waste your time!

Having been an avid watcher of The Divine David Presents, and having seen him perform live a number of times, I've always counted myself as one of David Hoyle's fans. His unsettling mixture of compassion, anger at the world's injustice, and a complementary willingness to laugh at cruelty made him a unique performer. But ten years' good work has been undone in an instant – though it felt like a small eternity – with this film. A stultifying 94-minutes of non-plot, non-acting, non-scripted tedium which was filmed on video over five days in a caravan park. Hoyle plays the eponymous character who has sex with his hunky young nephew Ashley (Ashley Ryder) and sometimes pimps him out to other men.

The film comprises mostly of Uncle David giving boring lectures on consumerism and heteronormativism to Ashley. There is a small break in the tedium when they dance around their caravan for a bit, and a nice 45-second interlude when the two characters charm some cows in a foggy field. But then we're back to Uncle David drivelling on for the third time about how people who go to work are drones and mortgages are bad. The film ends with its "shocking" climax, but it's shocking only in that it's dragged out for so long.

Seeing Hoyle live, he has a tremendous energy which somehow seems to evaporate when captured on cheap video. Even when he's smashing up some china figurines (daringly representing the Christian family) there's something quite soporific about his performance.

It's a good bit of marketing having Ryder as co-star though the man can barely act. Even a relatively simple line like "that blue's nice, it matches your top" – which is hardly "once more into the breach" – seems beyond him. Hoyle should have remembered the 27th Law of Showbiz: Porn stars and actors should never be confused. This is the law which explains why Ian McKellen was never asked to do World Soccer Orgy 3.

Although I thought it the most tedious film I've seen in years I'm sure others will warm to its critique of Western Society, its "transgressive" nature, and its shots of Ashley Ryder naked.

Oh, and one other thing. If, for some reason I can't fathom, you want to push up the film's IMDb star rating probably best not to give it ten stars as it looks a tad suspicious. Although I loathed the film I could imagine someone giving it a six or a seven. Possibly an eight. Maybe, God help us, a nine. But today's stats show that 7 out of 18 voters have given it the maximum rating believing that Uncle David is up there with The Passion of Joan of Arc, Bicycle Thieves, Vertigo, Citizen Kane, 2001: A Space Odyssey,Rosemary's Baby,….I could go on but I'd imagine you get the point.

There are moments when this film seems to have a story and destination, but Ashley Ryder, porn performer, was obviously cast for his physical appeal, not acting ability.

The story and film are lurid and puerile. Down-and-dirty film-making can be seriously brilliant (Tangerine) or shockingly poor and self-indulgent, as is this film.

After viewing this I felt compelled to write a review of the WTF I just watched. Uncle David is a movie that's only crutch is it's disturbing factor because besides that this movie is unbelievably bad! And even the idea of disturbing is kinda of joke here. The story is supposed to about an uncle and nephew who are both of consenting age to have their bizarro relationship. All that really goes down in most of this is guy blabbing about his philosophies of life to someone so bored out of their mind that they wanna be murdered by this guy.

Most of what happens here is nothing. The only thing I even remember slightly happening was some bad dance sequence to a song that sounded like a poor man's cover of Muse "Uprising" . Speaking about the music this movie over all feels like it's some weird ass musical. And a bad one at that.

Mind you some of this is pretty effective and dark but most of the film seems so bizarrely inept and badly acted and poorly mic'd that it looses the little bit of good has going for it.

This is not a comedy, not a horror and not a thriller, let's get that out of the way.

It's a dark love story of astonishing honesty and beauty and one of the finest films I've seen in recent years.

It's uncompromisingly honest in a truly refreshing way with incredibly nuanced and powerful performances by David Hoyle and Ashley Stryder.

The settings and cinematography are excellent, as is the original score and songs.

This is a film that doesn't tell you how to think or feel about it... it creates a web of emotions and possible interpretations that are perhaps more beautiful left unresolved.

Despite the story arc, my strongest impression was of the joy of simple pleasures.

I absolutely loved it.