Ever since his highschool golf teammates realized he couldn’t hit a straight tee shot, Carter (David Krumholtz) has been saddled with a nickname that doesn’t permit a lot room for charitable interpretations. His days of athletic mediocrity are actually far behind him, however the “Awful Carter” moniker has adopted him all through his grownup life — and albeit, it’s onerous to argue he doesn’t deserve it. The query of whether or not his highschool bullies had been abnormally clairvoyant or he merely lived right down to their insults is a chicken-and-egg dilemma, however the middle-aged iteration of Carter that we meet in Bob Byington’s newest movie is an undeniably awful man.
The literature professor has spent the majority of his grownup life coasting on the glimmer of promise that he confirmed as an animator when he launched his first movie 13 years in the past. He parlayed these 15 seconds of fame right into a comfortable instructing gig that has sustained him by way of his inventive dry spell, however he by no means acquired round to creating a second movie. He’s spent years kicking round an thought for a rotoscoped tackle the work of Vladimir Nabokov, however extreme consuming and doing the naked minimal at his day job have taken up the majority of his free time.
Carter’s lack of ambition, remoted private life, and harmful habits ought to be evident indicators that he’s setting himself up for some actual despair within the close to future. However the awful golfer isn’t too apprehensive concerning the again 9 of life, as a result of he solely has six months to dwell. The terminal prognosis doesn’t trouble him as a lot because it ought to, since he’s not leaving a lot behind in addition to medical debt and boring paperwork. Years of alcoholism {and professional} failures most likely numbed his feelings lengthy earlier than the film begins, so the information of his impending doom fails to elicit way more than a powerful shrug.
However even essentially the most repressed people have to vary one thing about their routine after they understand their days are numbered. Carter has neither the bucket record nor the means to pursue a grandiose last journey, and he was by no means the form of man who’d decide to spend his twilight days making the world a greater place. As a substitute, the movie performs out like a bizarro tackle “Ikiru.” Akira Kurosawa’s life affirming basic follows a dying bureaucrat who devotes his final weeks on earth constructing a youngsters’s playground, in the end discovering true peace by dwelling for one thing larger than himself. Byington takes Carter within the different course, because the ailing tutorial decides to cram as many sins as doable into his final semester on the metaphorical campus.
Carter realizes that he’s by no means had an affair with a pupil, an issue he tries to rectify by inviting Gail (Luxy Banner) into his “Nice Gatsby” seminar that’s imagined to be capped at eight college students. Slightly than the real horniness that has introduced down so many males in comparable positions of energy, Carter’s try at an exploitative relationship stems from his concept that preying on college students is one thing {that a} dying professor ought to need to do. He pays Gail to star in his animated “Lolita” movie, which he has now determined to complete earlier than he dies as a means of filling the hours that he can’t spend consuming. When her apathy towards him stalls his plans, he pivots to sleeping together with his finest good friend’s spouse.
As a personality research, “Awful Carter” is a depressingly life like portrait of a sure breed of poisonous has-beens who waste away in tenured jobs at liberal arts campuses throughout America. And to Krumholtz’s credit score, he offers a plausible efficiency because the form of loser who deserves a harsher epithet than “awful” in entrance of his identify. Media literacy may situation viewers to suspect there’s an enormous secret lurking beneath his facade, some hidden brilliance or life-defining trauma that’s simply ready to be found. When that reveal by no means arrives, we’re left to deduce that the true fact behind the movie is that some males are simply irredeemably awful.
Creating a personality who elicits zero sympathy regardless of receiving a terminal prognosis and cremating his late mom inside a 76-minute runtime is not any small feat, however “Awful Carter” pulls it off. Sadly, Byington traps the character in an odious purgatory that deprives him of both uplifting redemption or cathartic comeuppance. The movie would have benefitted from both committing to Carter’s development or taking the comedy in a a lot darker course, however the center path it trods is in the end unsatisfying. “Awful Carter” may be a reminder that center age is stuffed with monotony and unsolvable issues, however that doesn’t imply our motion pictures must be.
Grade: C
A Magnolia Footage launch, “Awful Carter” opens in choose theaters and on VOD platforms on Friday, March 29.
