Entertainment

Making the best of a very dad situation

Josh and Ben Safdie’s quasi-autobiographical, ultra-low-budget “Daddy Longlegs,” depicting a chronically irresponsible dad’s two weeks of harrowing custodial misadventures in Manhattan with his two young sons, has a certain dark charm if you can put up with very jittery camera work and editing.

The Safdies (“The Pleasure of Being Robbed”) draw very effective performances from a cast of nonprofessional actors headed by “Frownland” director Ronnie Bronstein (who, like Lenny, the character he plays, also works as a projectionist in real life).

An overgrown child with questionable child-rearing skills, Lenny attempts to juggle his job and a complicated love life during the two weeks his exasperated ex-wife (Leah Singer) has turned their two sons — delightfully played by real-life siblings Sage and Frey Ranaldo — over to him for safekeeping.

The kids, who haven’t seen Lenny in months, enjoy the lack of structure, at least at first.

Lenny thinks nothing of leaving them in the custody of an artist neighbor while he goes out and picks up a woman in a bar.

She invites Lenny and the kids on an impromptu trip upstate with the woman’s disgruntled boyfriend.

But Lenny’s almost willful lack of judgment (the kids don’t always make it to school) has potentially fatal consequences when he’s called into work and his girlfriend (Eleonore Hendricks) can’t baby-sit.

So he feeds them sleeping pills — and commits an impulsive act that lands him behind bars.

There’s something very New York about an eccentric 30-something man leading his sons onto the Roosevelt Island tram — with a refrigerator strapped to his back.

“Daddy Longlegs,” which clearly draws inspiration from the films of John Cassavetes, is full of such quirky moments that help offset its awkwardness.