Uncle Joe Shannon (1978)

          The success of Rocky (1976) created opportunities for nearly everyone involved in the project, among them supporting player Burt Young, who played the title character’s volatile brother-in-law in the first movie and several sequels. After broadening his skillset to include screenwriting by penning a TV episode and a telefilm, Young wrote a star vehicle called Uncle Joe Shannon and teamed with Rocky’s producers to make the film. That Young neither blossomed into a marquee name nor wrote another feature correctly indicates that Uncle Joe Shannon is an underwhelming picture. Formulaic, manipulative, and sentimental, it feels like a throwback to the cornpone weepies of the 1930s, and Young fails to deliver a properly dimensional performance—his tonalities range from addled to cranky to violent to weird, with his attempts at warmth seeming forced and mawkish. Yet Uncle Joe Shannon is surprisingly tolerable, and periodically more than that, because of the polish provided by cinematographer Bill Butler and composer Bill Conti. The movie’s look has that same appealing combination of grit and gloss as the Rocky movies, and Conti’s penchant for over-the-top scoring has never found a more suitable storyline.

          In the opening scenes, Joe (Young) is a successful trumpet player, playing sold-out concerts and scoring big-budget movies. Home life is wonderful, too, because he has a beautiful wife and a sweet son. After a fire claims their lives, Joe becomes a derelict, drinking himself into oblivion until circumstances make him responsible for a young boy named Robbie (Doug McKeon). This relationship follows roughly the contours you might expect, with Joe struggling to play the father-figure role while Robbie pushes Joe to get well. Then Young, in his capacity as the film’s writer, throws an absurd twist into the narrative, transforming the picture from a character study to a tearjerker.

          Given the rickety storyline and Young’s tendency to wail like an animal through emotional scenes, Uncle Joe Shannon should be cringe-inducing, but somehow it never sinks to that level. Even during the stupidest stretches of plotting, Butler’s photography is glorious and Conti’s music (which often calls to mind Chuck Mangione’s smooth-jazz vibe) is immersive. Moreover, it’s not as if Young’s performance is a complete bust—he channels despair believably, he gets humiliation right, and he’s loose and real even when the situations he’s playing are absurdly contrived. Complementing Young is McKeon, later to become a fine teen actor in the early and mid-’80s. Eschewing the cute-kid theatrics of, say, Ricky Schroeder, McKeon credibly manifests bitter rage in many scenes.

Uncle Joe Shannon: FUNKY