SIFF 2024: 'Chuck Chuck Baby' Capsule Review

Sucks to be Helen (Louise Brealey). She works nights at the chicken-packing plant, lives with her dirtbag ex and his idiot 20-year-old baby mama, and cares for his dying mother, Gwen (a wonderful Sorcha Cusack), who’s as close to a mother as she’s ever known. When Joanne (Annabel Scholey), her schoolgirl crush, returns to town, it lights something ablaze within her. 

 

[Related Reading: 'Eternal' Movie Review]

 

Bawdy and  romantic, full of musical interludes, complete with choreography set to Neil Diamond, Minnie Ripperton, and more, Chuck Chuck Baby is heartwarming and strange, bittersweet and messy. At its core, it’s about escaping the past and finding—and taking, and accepting that you deserve them—moments of joy, love, connection and beauty in between the bits that grind us down. [Grade: A]

 

Find all our 2024 Seattle International Film Festival coverage here.