After years of rumors, highly influential comedian and television guru Louis C.K. has admitted that the sexual allegations against him are indeed true. Several women recently came forward in a New York Times article citing C.K. as asking them to watch him masturbate, forcing women to watch him masturbate, or masturbating over the phone with an unsuspecting woman. Right now in the new climate of Hollywood, it appears that C.K.’s comedy career is at a standstill if not legitimately over. And strangely amidst all this was the planned release of a little movie he wrote, directed and stars in called I Love You, Daddy, about a famous Hollywood director with rumors of sexual indecency. The movie has been pulled from release but not before screeners were sent to critics. I don’t know when the general public will get its chance to watch I Love You, Daddy, but allow me to attempt to digest my thoughts on the film and any possible deeper value (there will be spoilers but isn’t that why you’re reading anyway?).

Glen (Louis C.K.) is a successful TV writer and producer. He’s starting another show and Grace (Rose Byrne), a pregnant film actress, is interested in a starring role and perhaps in Glen himself. His 17-year-old daughter China (Chloe Grace Moritz) takes an interest in a much older director, Leslie Goodwin (John Malkovich), with a troubled past. Glen idolizes Leslie Goodwin but isn’t comfortable with the interest he’s shown in his underage daughter.

It’s impossible to resist the urge to psychoanalyze the film especially considering it’s otherwise a fairly mediocre button-pushing comedy. The biggest question that comes to mind is why exactly did C.K. bring this movie into existence? He hasn’t directed a film since 2002’s blaxploitation parody Pootie Tang. It didn’t even come into being until this past June, when C.K. funded it himself and shot it over the course of a few weeks. What about this story was begging to be brought to life, especially with C.K. as its voice? He didn’t have to make this. He brought this into the world. Given the controversial subject matter, C.K. must have known that the film would at minimum reignite the long-standing rumors of his own sexual transgressions. So why would he make I Love You, Daddy? This is where the dime-store psychiatry comes in handy, because after viewing the finished film, it feels deeply confessional from its author. It feels like C.K. is unburdening himself. I cannot say whether it was conscious or subconscious, but this is a work of art where C.K. is showing who he is and hoping that you won’t realize.

This is very much C.K.’s riff on Woody Allen movies and Woody Allen’s own troubled history of sexual impropriety; it’s an ode to Allen and a commentary on Allen (C.K. had a supporting role in Allen’s Blue Jasmine in 2013). It’s filmed in black and white and even follows a similar plot setup from Manhattan, where Allen romances a 17-year-old Mariel Hemingway. It’s about our moral indignation giving way to compromise once our own heroes are affected or whether or not our own lives can be benefited. The stilted nature of human interaction among a privileged set of New Yorkers is reminiscent of Allen’s windows into the world of elites. It’s an approach that C.K. doesn’t wear well, especially coming from his much more organic and surreal television series. The movie is trying to find a deeper understanding in the Woody Allen-avatar but never really does. I grew tired of most of the conversations between flat characters that were poorly formed as mouthpieces for C.K.’s one-liners and discussion points (and an N-word joke for good measure). Leslie is an enigma simply meant to challenge Glen on his preconceived ideas. Leslie isn’t so much a character as a stand-in for Woody Allen as stand-in for C.K.’s own fears of hypocrisy and inadequacy. And that begets further examination below.

In retrospect, looking for the analysis, there are moments that come across as obvious. C.K. has generally played a thinly veiled version of himself in his starring vehicles. Here he’s a highly regarded television writer and producer who seems to keep making new highly regarded television series. There are too many moments and lines for this movie not to feel like C.K. is confessing or mitigating his misdeeds. One of China’s friends, a fellow teen girl, makes the tidy rationalization that everyone is a pervert so what should it all matter? Sexuality may be a complicated mosaic but that doesn’t excuse relationships with underage minors and masturbating in front of women against their will. Glen says that people should not judge others based upon rumors and that no one can ever truly know what goes on in another person’s private life. There’s a moment late in the film where Glen is irritated and bellows an angry apology with the literal words, “I’m sorry to all women. I want all women to know I apologize for being me!” I almost stopped my screener just to listen to this line again. In the end, Glen has a fall from grace and loses his credibility in the industry. He’s told by his producing partner, “So you were a great man and now you’re not.” And the last moment we share with Glen before the time jump that reveals his fall from grace? It’s with China’s “everyone’s a pervert” friend and after she confesses that she once had a crush on Glen when she was younger and that she finds older men sexy. After a few seconds, he slightly lurches toward her like he’s going to attempt to kiss her and she recoils backwards. Glen interprets the moment very wrong and tries to make an unwanted move on a much younger woman. Yikes.

There’s also a supporting character that twice visually mimes masturbating in public. Yeah, C.K. literally included that gag twice. For a solid twenty minutes I didn’t know if Charlie Day’s character was real of a Tyler Durden-esque figment of Glen’s outré imagination. Day plays an actor with a close relationship with Glen. He’s not like any other character and seems to speak as Glen’s uncontrolled sense of id, urging him into bad decisions. During one of those furious masturbatory pantomimes (not a phrase one gets to write often in film criticism, let alone the plural) Day’s character is listening to Grace on speakerphone. This is literally the same kind of deviant act that C.K. perpetrated on a woman detailed in The New York Times expose. It’s gobsmacking, as if Bill Cosby wrote a best friend character that would drug women at a party he hosted, and Cosby wrote this after the rape allegations already gained traction. Double yikes.

As a film, I Love You, Daddy feels rushed and incomplete. The editing is really choppy and speaks to a limited amount of camera setups and shooting time. Locations are fairly nondescript and the entire thing takes on a stagy feel that also permeates the acting. C.K.’s television work has revolved around a very observational, natural style of acting and a style that absorbs silence as part of its repertoire of techniques. I Love You, Daddy feels so stilted and unrealistic and it’s somewhat jarring for fans of C.K.’s series. The actors all do acceptable work with their parts but the characters are pretty thin. You feel a lack of energy throughout the film that saps performances of vitality. There’s a method to the reasoning on presenting China as an empty character until the very end, which speaks to Glen’s lack of understanding of who his daughter is as a person. The overall storytelling is pretty mundane, especially for C.K. and the topic. He seems to open conversations on topics he believes don’t have easy answers, like age of consent laws, statutory rape, and judging other people based upon their reputations, and then steps away. The film wants to be provocative but fails to fashion a follow-through to connect. There aren’t nearly enough nuances to achieve C.K.’s vision as saboteur of social mores.

It feels like C.K. might have anticipated having to come forward and accept the totality of his prior bad behavior, and maybe he felt I Love You, Daddy was his artistic stab at controlling the reckoning he knew would eventually arrive. I would only recommend this movie as a curiosity to the most ardent fans of C.K. comedy. I Love You, Daddy delivers a few chuckles but it’s mostly a mediocre and overlong Woody Allen throwback companion piece. It’s harder to separate the art from the artist when that artist has complete ownership over the vision. As of this writing, I can still watch Kevin Spacey acting performances and enjoy them for what they are, mostly because he is one component of a larger artistic whole. In C.K.’s case, he writes, directs, stars, and it’s his complete imprint upon the material. I consider 2016’s Horace and Pete to be of nigh unparalleled brilliance that I wouldn’t hesitate to call it a modern American theatrical masterpiece that could sit beside Eugene O’Neill. So much of C.K.’s material was based around his brutal sense of self-loathing and now the audience might feel that same sensation if they sit down and watch I Love You, Daddy. Unless you want to do like I did and unpack the film as a psychological exercise of a man crying out, there’s no real reason to watch this except as the possible final capstone on C.K.’s public career.

Nate’s Grade: C