I saw Choke last Sunday, and… well, it’s not so much my schedule that has delayed the review as my inability to find anything to say about it. It’s just that it defies description. I mean, I can write down a sentence, and it will be factual; that’s not a problem. It’s that I despair of any ability to really capture the essence of the thing, so that you can judge for yourself if you want to see it or not. I’m pretty sure you should want to, but that’s really beside the point.

Choke is a black comedy about a sex-addicted historical re-enactor who is trying to come to grips with his mother’s failing mental faculties, while pointedly not trying to come to grips with his personality defects; he acknowleges these[1], but revels in them. See, and that’s my point: there’s no way you really know what the movie is about from that description. You don’t know that Victor is potentially a partial clone of… well, I can’t ruin that surprise. You certainly couldn’t guess that it’s at heart a sweet movie that is the biggest cheering section for all of its characters’ happiness, despite how impossible that probably is. You might have a better idea if you want to see the movie now; at least, I hope so. But no way did it come from the description, because that was a tangled, misleading mess, despite being completely accurate in every way. But at least you had fair warning!

[1] Among them is a penchant for intentionally blocking his windpipe with food, in the hopes that the person who does the Heimlich will, in the long run, give him money. Plausibly, this is the source of the title.