Just plain awful. Saw it at a recent gay festival and, sure, it's an audience crowd pleaser, but most gay audiences are like lemmings when it comes to this kind of film. Cardboard cutouts for characters, stereotypes, jokes that have been made a hundred times before, and (surprise, surprise) a drag queen thrown in for good measure. I mean, what's a gay flick without a drag queen clouding up the area. Critics (most of whom have their heads shoved up their asses when it comes to this kind of thing- hence the good reviews Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss and Kiss Me Guido got) say this is a breakthrough gay film, in that it doesn't rely on issues. Well, that's just fine, except it relies on good old fashioned stereotypes.
I watched this film and didn't see one real person. We have the musical theatre writer, the go go boy, the queened out to the hilt cabaret singer who sounds less butch than wayland flowers, the fag hag secretly in love with her gay best friend and let's not forget that drag queen, who makes one of the most forced, inexplicable appearances in a film I have ever seen. (Plus, I have never seen a drag queen who does Anne Meara before, but I can give his performance no other explanation.)Where are the real people?
Story wise, we are supposed to buy that these two guys who are looking for a place to have sex are going to fall in love with each other in one night when in real life, they wouldn't have a thing in common. Pitoc plays the go go boy as a tweaked out numbskull and Campbell is so full of nervous tics that you would abandon him after 15 minutes, no matter how cute he is. And after repeated shots of Pitoc looking bored and annoyed with the whole mess (just like some of the audience) he then turns around and tells us he thought this evening was supposed to be something more than casual sex???? There's no character development, no progression. We're meant to take enormous leaps of faith because the filmmaker tells us to, without giving us one reason why we should care about these people or want to spend time with them.
It's a real shame that the wool has once again been pulled over critic's eyes. This kind of film would never fly if it were a straight love story. Why should gay audiences be willing to settle for such poor quality?
I watched this film and didn't see one real person. We have the musical theatre writer, the go go boy, the queened out to the hilt cabaret singer who sounds less butch than wayland flowers, the fag hag secretly in love with her gay best friend and let's not forget that drag queen, who makes one of the most forced, inexplicable appearances in a film I have ever seen. (Plus, I have never seen a drag queen who does Anne Meara before, but I can give his performance no other explanation.)Where are the real people?
Story wise, we are supposed to buy that these two guys who are looking for a place to have sex are going to fall in love with each other in one night when in real life, they wouldn't have a thing in common. Pitoc plays the go go boy as a tweaked out numbskull and Campbell is so full of nervous tics that you would abandon him after 15 minutes, no matter how cute he is. And after repeated shots of Pitoc looking bored and annoyed with the whole mess (just like some of the audience) he then turns around and tells us he thought this evening was supposed to be something more than casual sex???? There's no character development, no progression. We're meant to take enormous leaps of faith because the filmmaker tells us to, without giving us one reason why we should care about these people or want to spend time with them.
It's a real shame that the wool has once again been pulled over critic's eyes. This kind of film would never fly if it were a straight love story. Why should gay audiences be willing to settle for such poor quality?