Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		3.0
Overall		4.0

Uncle Nick Blu-ray Movie Review

Drunk Uncle

Reviewed by Michael Reuben November 8, 2016

While the world awaits the return of Billy Bob Thornton's Bad Santa, MPI Media is releasing its own variation of arsenic-spiked eggnog with Uncle Nick, the feature debut of director Chris Kasick and writer Mike Demski. The film stars Brian Posehn, whose impressive height (six feet, seven inches) and substantial girth have usually relegated him to supporting roles in such offbeat fare as HBO's Mr. Show with Bob and Dave and The Sarah Silverman Program on Comedy Central. Currently Posehn can be seen on The Big Bang Theory as a geologist so nerdy that he makes the regular characters seem normal by comparison. But in Uncle Nick, Posehn reveals previously hidden talents playing a character who initially appears to be an unredeemable jerk but, by the film's end, discloses unexpected depth.

Nick Wilkins (Posehn) is a hard-drinking, overweight, forty-something slob with a sour attitude and a penchant for inappropriate and self-indulgent behavior. The oldest of three siblings, Nick is the one who inherited their father's small landscaping business, which has a single employee, Luis (Joe Nunez), whom Nick insists on calling "Mexican" even though Luis is from Puerto Rico (and a U.S. citizen, as the beleaguered gardener quietly points out, to no avail). At the moment, Nick is preoccupied with Christmas Eve, which he will be spending in the unaccustomed venue of a fancy suburban house owned by his new sister-in-law, Sophie (Paget Brewster), who has recently married Nick's little brother, Cody (Beau Ballinger). A successful pharmaceutical rep, Sophie ditched her husband in favor of the much younger Cody. As far as Nick is concerned, his brother is just an indolent trophy husband acquired by an aging "cougar" (Nick's word), who is supporting Cody while he pursues his latest "business opportunity": a custom T-shirt shop offering such inspired logos as "Futtbucker". Joining the group will be Nick's and Cody's sister, Michelle (Missi Pyle), who works in retail and whose husband, Kevin (Scott Adsit), is obsessed with his podcast about local affairs that no one listens to.

While Nick is dreading the whole experience, there is one bright spot: the prospect of seducing Sophie's sultry twenty-year-old daughter, Valerie (Melia Renee), whose anger at her parents' divorce is being expressed in multiple acts of rebellion that might just include a fling with her new "uncle"—or at least that's what Nick hopes. From the moment Nick arrives at Sophie's home, he and Valerie begin an unseemly flirtation over cigarettes shared in secret, sexting and mutual disdain for Valerie's mother. Sophie's other child, teenage Marcus (Jacob Houston), has sullenly withdrawn into online gaming, but even he gets caught up in Nick's machinations, as the boy's new uncle slips him holiday punch that's mostly alcohol.

As the evening progress (or perhaps it would be more accurate to say "deteriorates"), old conflicts and familiar patterns of behavior emerge, as so often happens among family members gathered for the holidays. Nick and Michelle are merciless in ridiculing their younger brother, who is desperate to show off the palatial new residence that his older siblings do not hesitate to remind him isn't really "his". Sophie works herself into a nervous frazzle attempting to create a family holiday for two sullen kids who cannot forgive her for breaking up their family. Meanwhile, Nick and Valerie pursue their perverse game of seduction to an unexpected but disastrous conclusion.

Uncle Nick is set in Cleveland, Ohio, the hometown of both the film's writer and its director, who intercut the film's twisted tale of a Christmas-from-hell with the account of a famous baseball melee from 1974 known as "Ten Cent Beer Night", when a home game for the Cleveland Indians against the Texas Rangers erupted into a riot. The alcohol-fueled event, meticulously re-created in documentary-style black-and-white and narrated by Nick, provides a thematic counterpoint to the present-day conflicts. Eventually there's a connection between this historic sports disaster and the equally disastrous Wilkins holiday four decades later. But perhaps the most surprising feature of Uncle Nick is its unexpected turn into pathos, as director Kasick and his talented cast gradually expose the pain and anguish beneath the troubled relationships and bad behavior. Posehn, who begins the film drawing on his extensive repertoire of pitiful and obnoxious characters, ultimately succeeds in revealing the core of a genuine person beneath the caricature. Uncle Nick may not be lovable, but there's more to him than first meets the eye.

Uncle Nick Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Uncle Nick was shot digitally (on the Red Epic, according to IMDb) by Michael Pescasio, with whom director Kasick has worked on numerous commercials. The photographic style reflects a documentary aesthetic not only in the black-and-white scenes re-creating "Ten Cent Beer Night", but also in the present-day sequences, where the camera seems to be a casual observer recording the holiday celebrations of the Wilkins family. MPI Media's 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray has the texture of a TV news report, with hyper-realistic detail capturing everything from Sophie's festively decorated home to Cody's T-shirt-strewn studio to the whiskers on Nick's face and the pores on his body. The historical sequences have a slightly softer texture, which allows them to blend effectively with actual historical photos from the events of 1974. Colors are generally realistic, although the palette favors rich, saturated tones indoors to contrast with cold, wintry tones outdoors. MPI has mastered Uncle Nick with an average bitrate of 21.85 Mbps and a capable encode.

Uncle Nick Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Uncle Nick's 5.1 soundtrack, encoded in lossless DTS-HD MA 5.1, also reflects a documentary aesthetic in its front-oriented and dialogue-driven sound design. The surrounds support the running narration by Brian Posehn's Nick and the ironic score by P. Andrew Willis, another documentary veteran.

As is customary with Blu-ray releases from MPI Media, an alternate PCM 2.0 track is included.

Uncle Nick Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Commentary with Director Chris Kasick, Actor Brian Posehn and Writer Mike Demski: The writer, star and director focus primarily on casting and performance. Many of the actors knew each other from prior projects, but actress Melia Renee ("Valerie") had the unusual connection of being a former nanny to Posehn's children, a history that the actor says made it challenging for him to play their sexually frank scenes together. Kasick and Demski also discuss their Cleveland roots, and Kasick describes the challenges of shooting Los Angeles for Cleveland.



• Outtakes (1080p; 1.78:1; 2:58): Many of these are improvs, and one suspects there are plenty more.



• Family Portraits (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:18): Accompanied by "Silent Night", the cast pose in character, as if for a photographer.



• Barf-O-Rama (1080p; 1.78:1; 0:39): A compilation of the film's frequent scenes of vomiting, set to the tune of "Joy to the World".



• Red Band Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:53): Virtually identical to the "green band" trailer below, with a few extra curses.



• Green Band Trailer (1080p; 1.78:1; 1:54).



• Introductory Trailers: At startup, the disc plays trailers for The Demolisher, Night of the Living Deb, Traders and If There's a Hell Below.

Uncle Nick Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Kasick got his start working with documentary legend Errol Morris, who serves as executive producer of Uncle Nick and whose skillful historical re-creations in films like The Thin Blue Line are an obvious influence on the film's baseball sequences. The same sense of documentary realism pervades the present-day scenes, which often feel a little too close for comfort. Uncle Nick is unlikely to become anyone's favorite Christmas film, but it's both an antidote to cloying holiday fare and, beneath its fractious surface, a surprisingly moving examination of deeply flawed individuals grasping for emotional life preservers during a season when it's all too easy to sink. Recommended, with a warning label.