David Duchovny has had quite a unique career. From his non-speaking film debut in Working Girl to his TV debut in David Lynch’s Twin Peaks, Duchovny never shied away from different genres. That paid off in his breakout role in 1993’s The X-Files, a show that ran until 2002 and became a pop culture phenomenon.
From his career in film and TV, few may be aware that Duchovny has also shared his talents behind the camera with a feature film written/directed by the actor. While House of D’s debut was mainly panned, his second outing, Bucky F*cking Dent, was one of this year’s Tribeca Film Festival’s most anticipated titles.
Based on the book of the same name released in 2016 and also written by Duchovny, Bucky F*cking Dent follows Ted, a peanut vendor at Yankee Stadium who aspires to be a writer but continues to receive rejection upon rejection. Upon hearing that his father, Marty, a lifelong Red Sox fan, is dying, Ted moves in with Marty to recoup lost time and mend fences with his ailing father.
How does he do that? When the Sox loses a game, Marty gets worse, so Ted enlists the help of Maria, Marty’s grief counselor and friends, to fake a winning streak for the Sox. The only problem, it’s 1978, and Bucky Dent plays for the Yankees, so for any sports fan, the ending of the Sox season is inevitable.
Speaking of inevitability, Duchovny’s screenplay effectively captures the inevitability of death and the balance of grief and capturing memories before the end arrives. Duchovny can weave the emotional scars and heartwarming laughs throughout that bring an enjoyable middle ground to this dramedy.
Performance-wise, Duchovny, Logan Marshall-Green, and Stephanie Beatriz are doing excellent work. The three have a chemistry that is hard to ignore, and how they play off each other is one of the film’s best features. While the film is set to evoke tears, the three do a splendid job of eliciting genuine and honest laughs throughout, highlighted by Duchovny and Marshall-Green’s locker room talk and Marshall-Green and Beatriz’s Spanish lesson.
While this adaptation mainly works, there are a few “rinse and repeat” moments during the film that bloat the runtime up to almost 2 hours, and there are scenes that easily could have been trimmed for the film’s benefit. Also, while hilarious, sometimes, some jokes miss the mark and evoke eye rolls rather than laughs.
Bucky F*cking Dent is one of Tribeca 2023’s finest offerings. It’s a film that, like Bucky Dent, will come out of nowhere and hit a home run of tears and cheers in one of the year’s most enjoyable entries.
