CHRISTOPHER Plummer tries his hand at a Burt Young character in “Man in the Chair,” an indie about a student filmmaker (Michael Angarano) who meets a drunken curmudgeon (Plummer) who once worked as a gaffer on “Citizen Kane.”
Soon the geezer is rounding up his fellow retirees – some of them Oscar winners – to help the kid with his dream. The student, who lacks a subject for his film, starts to think that the squalid conditions of senior living might make a vivid documentary.
It’s a cute idea that a better filmmaker than writer-director Michael Schroeder could have done a lot with. There are some nice bits of nostalgia, such as when the old man sneaks the kid into a secret back room on a studio lot where the crew used to play cards.
But the story drags as Schroeder delivers lots of repetitive scenes of Plummer drinking and stumbling; the making of the student film itself is dispensed with in a quick montage, and Schroeder fails to grasp the “Cocoon”-like comic possibilities of old folks getting one more chance to feel young.
Also, Schroeder keeps punctuating scenes with multiple exposures, giddy camera movements and flashes of light accompanied by a sinister “Fwoomp!” on the soundtrack. Save it for “Saw V.”
Running time: 107 minutes. Rated PG-13 (profanity). At the Empire, 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue.