Donald Cried

The first thing you need to know about Donald Cried is that it isn’t about the current president. No, this comedy can be seen as a funnier counterpart to 2016’s Manchester by the Sea, since it also takes place in New England and centers around a death in the main character’s family. If you like your laughs served up with a good-sized helping of behavior that makes you cringe or shift awkwardly in your seat, this low-budget affair is for you.

The film begins with Wall Street investment banker Peter Latang (Jesse Wakeman) returning to the small Rhode Island town where he grew up, when it’s covered by several feet of snow. He’s only there for the day to set his recently deceased grandmother’s affairs in order, but he loses his wallet en route from New York. That forces him to rely on the titular character, Donald Treebeck (Kris Avedisian), his childhood best friend and his grandmother’s neighbor, who is way too happy to see his old buddy after many years apart.

Avedisian – the writer and director as well as starring actor – makes Donald into a compelling, unsettling force of awkwardness. A bespectacled, long-haired guy with precious little social awareness, Donald’s sort of like Napoleon Dynamite gone to middle-aged sleaze.

He keeps a desperate smile plastered on his face, even when he’s describing one of their mutual childhood acquaintances getting killed in a gruesome motorcycle accident. His bedroom looks like a college student’s from the 1980s, replete with posters of heavy-metal bands and C-level action movies, as well as a personally autographed poster of a masturbating porn star, something that Donald is quite proud of. (“I met her at a convention,” he says. “She’s not only got the body, but she’s got the mind, too. I really appreciate that she’s a thinker as well as a doer.”)

He describes how he imagined his teen pal returning home: “I thought you’d be, like, a bounty hunter riding this big old motorcycle… and you’d have weapons and big, oily, veiny muscles… and you’d still have your long hair flowing and you’d look like a Jewish witch… and [your hair] would, like, tell the story of your life. Like, you’d weave keepsakes into it from all the people you killed.”

Donald is a buffoon, but his obliviousness and clinginess make him somewhat dangerous, as evidenced by another early scene when the two men happen to run into one of Peter’s exes at a diner, and Donald enthusiastically runs down their dating history, unwittingly humiliating the woman in front of her husband and ignoring Peter’s attempts to intervene.

It gets even weirder and creepier: Donald later admits to using Facebook to stalk a guy in Wyoming whom he thought was Peter, and becomes extremely passive-aggressive when Peter tries to leave his side temporarily to attend to business. Peter’s increasingly frantic attempts to shed Donald eventually escalate into violence when Donald torpedoes Peter’s attempted hookup with his real estate agent (Louisa Krause).

This is the first feature film for Avedisian, who adapted it from his own similarly named 2012 short film, and he seems to have trouble bringing this to a proper climax. (At 85 minutes, it feels like a stretch, and Avedisian may be better suited to TV.)

The aforementioned fight doesn’t do the job of arriving at a satisfying climax, and though the movie tries to build momentum by doling out more information about Donald’s sad little life as it goes along, the trick doesn’t work as well as it should, nor does it really explain why Donald is the way he is.

The film itself seems unsure of how much sympathy we should feel for Donald, who’s unable to function on his own and gets manhandled at work and at home by his bodybuilder boss (Ted Arcidi), who’s also his stepfather.

The film might have aimed for a larger point, like Donald being an example of toxic masculinity, but it seems to have its hands full just with the two guys onscreen here.

It hones in on micro – rather than macro-level storytelling. Other movies like Miguel Arteta’s Chuck & Buck and Alex Ross Perry’s Queen of Earth have mined this territory much more profitably, even if the latter film is not as funny as Donald Cried.

This movie does have one great comic character, and with his performance as Donald, Avedisian manages to conjure up an uncanny sense of presence. You feel like Donald is sitting next to you, grinning his dopey grin and making plans for the two of you to hang out despite whatever you may have on your schedule.

DONALD CRIED (2 1/2) • Directed by Kris Avedisian • Starring Jesse Wakeman, Kris Avedisian • Not rated • 85 min. • At Osio Theater