Choke is a confused sex comedy by Clark Gregg that blunders around for 90-odd minutes trying to look butch and sensitive. Sam Rockwell plays a middle-aged sex addict who fails to get off with half a dozen daft plot-lines. The short but perfectly formed slob goes to group therapy for sex with like-minded nymphomaniacs in the loo.

The film is generously sprinkled with fleshy couplings with willing slappers in public places. But the sex is forever ruined by Rockwell’s long list of grievances. The cynical stud earns his weekly wage as a ham actor in a colonial theme park. He pretends to choke in restaurants to scam love and money from impressionable diners who come to his rescue. And he spends tedious reels fussing over his senile mother, Anjelica Huston, in a mental hospital. She has no idea who he is. He is desperate to prise the identity of his real father from her.

It’s extremely hard to care. The comedy shuttles between seedy lap-dance bars and Rockwell’s mad oedipal obsession with Huston at her whimsical worst. The demented femme fatale sighs and simpers on her hospital death bed as if she’s missed a hairdressing appointment. Rockwell’s grand romance with Mum’s earnest doctor Kelly Macdonald (the only interesting cog in the film) is a top-shelf fantasy. But Choke is bottom-shelf nonsense.

18, 92 minutes

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