Mr. Vincent is like the classic stereotype of the film festival movie. It's not very good and not at all entertaining, but there's just enough talent on display and just enough storytelling that departs from the norm to make pretentious viewers think it's much better than what it is.
Johnny Vincent (Frank John Hughes) is a Yonkers native who's dreamed his whole life of being a musician, but ended up teaching English at his old high school and renting his boyhood home from his parents while continuing to pathetically sing his songs in the corner of a local bar. After his wife leaves him in a scene with all the passion of someone opening a tin of sardines, Johnny runs into a woman he went to high school with. Lisa (Lisa LoCicero) is a waitress who hates her job and is instantly attracted to Johnny. That's a little weird to begin with, considering that Johnny sports a greasy, slicked-back hairstyle from the 1950s, a porn stache from the 1970s and a wardrobe that ranges from Don Johnson in the 1980s to Kurt Kobain in the 1990s. Johnny, in turn, becomes obsessed with Lisa. His clingy neediness is expressed through ridiculous generosity and passive-aggressive controlling behavior.
Johnny and Lisa start out happy and about as laid back as coma patients but shift into full blown Jerry Springerish animosity and paranoia at the drop of a hat. Johnny becomes more and more fixated on Lisa and his behavior become more and more extreme, until Johnny finally lashes out by not having sex with one of his students and the film ends. Yes, you read that last sentence correctly. No, I'm not being sarcastic or making fun of the movie in any way. After going on and on and on and on and on about Johnny and Lisa, Mr. Vincent ends with Johnny and one of his students flirting inappropriately until he decides not to have sex with her. That's literally the way the film concludes.
It's stuff like that unconventional ending, a dream sequence that looks like something out of an Ed Wood picture and a persistent refusal to be entertaining in any traditional sense that fools your average film festival attendee into thinking this movie has something to offer. They watch something like Mr. Vincent and think because it's competently executed and different from mainstream cinematic formulas, that must mean it has some intellectual or artistic depth. Such folks are wrong, however. There's nothing deep, artistic or intellectual about this film.
Director/co-writer Robert Celestino does demonstrate a professional skill level and some imagination in his camera work and staging. He fails to do anything interesting with the black-and-white imagery of his movie and leaves plot threads scattered all over the film like someone threw the script on top of a land mine. Scenes with Johnny's frustrated musical career never go anywhere or amount to anything. The same is true for scenes involving his family, his students, Lisa's family, Johnny's friends and probably two or three other things I can't remember because they were so pointless.
The acting is fine in Mr. Vincent, in the sense that the cast is believable as a collection of guidos and rednecks from Yonkers. The only performer given something truly entertaining to do is Mimi Scott as Lisa's boozy, flirty, embarrassing mother. The rest of the characters seem to have been randomly plucked out of various episodes of the TV show "Cheaters".
Mr. Vincent isn't funny or dramatic and it doesn't offer up any insight into anything. It's just a boring slog from beginning to end. Skip this puppy.