'Sr.' Review: Robert Downey Jr. gets vulnerable in this bizarre collaboration with the cult director's father

How much of a career-spanning documentary of the underground anarchic filmmaker behind "Greaser's Palace" and "Putney Swope" must be? If you've seen any of Robert Downey's films, the answer is obviously: not really. You might even say, the scrappier the better. So goes the thinking behind "Sr.," a loose portrayal of the anti-establishment director (perhaps best known for fathering "Iron Man" star Robert Downey Jr.) that sneaks up on you, emotionally speaking, because it doubles as a sort of farewell exercise between the two generations (plus grandson Exton) in the months leading up to Downey's death from Parkinson's disease.

"Strangely enough, that's kind of what your family does. You make art of your life," Junior's therapist analyzes fairly late in the process, shortly before Dad passed away. There's no doubt that's what really happens in an incredibly unconventional documentary that was ostensibly directed by Chris Smith ("American Movie," "Fyre"), but sidetracked along the way by its subject matter, who can't resist the urge to make his own version of the movie we're watching. as Smith and cameraman Kevin Ford indulge the old man, giving "Senior" its own editing setup to tinker with with the footage they shoot.

It doesn't look like much at first - water balloon fights at home from Junior's Hamptons and shaky visits to the duck pond outside Downey's retirement home - but the aim is not to make the next 'Terms of Affection'. The project is both a bonding exercise and a coping mechanism, and the goal is to channel the energy of dad's renegade film career as much as possible, which is why all home-grade digital footage movie have been stripped of their color. Most of Downey's early work was shot in 16mm black-and-white, and the aesthetic is meant to match - though outtakes from the Oedipal Oddity "Chafed Elbows" (1966) have a distinctly raw feel, just a few degrees off. distance from the experiments of Andy Warhol and early films of John Waters. (Appearances on talk shows and well-chosen snippets of later films provide splashes of color in the grayscale document.)

Downey was a major figure in a minor scene, working with actors like Lawrence Wolf and Taylor Mead on irreverent stages of bad taste comedies that inevitably swayed mainstream audiences, as fringe works so often do. "Putney Swope" (1969) was Downey's big hit, daring as he did to tackle subjects Hollywood studios wouldn't dare. The film is set in a Madison Ave. advertising agency, where the head of the company dies and the only black member of the board of directors is elected as his successor. The world isn't ready for his (meaning the character's) ideas, but somehow audiences were looking forward to such an outrageously divisive comedy. The movie was successful enough for Downey to make another one - which, we learn, was about all he asked for in life.

The director has given his 5-year-old son Robert a role in the upcoming, "Pound ," and the kid was hooked. The creative energy of making underground films has always been present in Junior's life (he remembers falling asleep in one room while his parents went up to the next), and acting is became a way to do things together."When I saw cameras, I perceived it as time with my dad," says young Robert, who poignantly remembers his mother, the comedic actress Elsie Ann, too.(Older sister Allyson, who Downey also enlisted in his rowdy feature, is noticeably absent from the exercise.)

Then the whole family moved from New York to Los Angeles, and things got complicated: Downey was a bad fit for studio projects, like the R-rated military prank "Up the Academy", for which the director wanted a much younger cast (intended as an "Animal House"-style knockoff, the film's affiliation with Mad Magazine is never mentioned). During this period, the drug use got out of control, to the point that her son took to it. Robert Downey Jr. has been very open about the destructive effects of being raised in such an environment, but no doubt a good portion of the public will look to "Sr." largely because they seek to better understand the movie star's demons.

In the doc, Downey takes responsibility for exposing his son to cocaine at such.. .