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Man In The Chair feels a bit like a high school movie project, which is appropriate since that's exactly what it's about. Our hero is Cameron (Michael Angarano), a troubled teen whose only hope of a bright future is a film school scholarship. Devoting his vacation to shooting a ten minute short, he enlists the help of Flash Madden (Christopher Plummer) an alcoholic ex-gaffer who once worked on Citizen Kane. But can he keep him off the sauce?

Flash spends his days at a retirement home for old Hollywood talent, so Cameron suddenly has a film crew made up of forgotten legends. Best of these is M. Emmet Walsh, on fine tear-jerking form as a blocked screenwriter living in appalling squalor. Once he gets to know his collaborators, Cameron dumps his skateboarding movie idea and instead decides to make - aw, bless - a docudrama about nursing care for the elderly.

"PLUMMER CHEWS UP THE SCENERY"

It's always nice to see an old timer chewing up the scenery, and Plummer rises to the task with enormous gusto, whether he's heckling Cary Grant in His Girl Friday or teaching Cameron's dad to be a nicer person. Angarano does well to hold his own against such a powerhouse. So far so good, but director Michael Schroeder almost blows the whole thing by showing off at every opportunity, mixing stocks and speeds, throwing in double exposures, speed-cranking and a sledgehammer metaphorical subplot involving canine euthanasia. One imagines that Flash and his pals would have laughed this extraneous guff out of the cinema.

Man In The Chair is out in the UK on 25th January 2008.