Toda la rabia

I was extremely bewildered by the purpose of this film, but even more bewildered by the positive reviews a few people have left for it. It truly holds almost no value as a movie or social commentary at all. The acting is static and makes you feel like you are watching the first performance of several understudys. The subplot involving Merle Perkins' character Susan is unrelated and incomplete. The random black and white vignettes featuring the main character "Christopher Bedford" are intrusive and uninformative and I didn't care for a single one of the shallow, archetypical characters we were supposed to relate to.

The fact that people found some scathing commentary on the emptiness of the pretty boy "gym-bunny" gay lifestyle within this contrived film astounds me. Did I miss something? I saw a story about one man who sleeps around, cheats, and ends up lonely...Was that not an obvious conclusion? The emotionally charged ending seems out of place and adds 5 minutes of drama to a film that was an hour and a half of blah blah blah....YAWN

As a gay man, I can honestly say I HATED this film. It does TRY to show a certain type of gay man (obssessed with the gym, high-paying job, can't commit, treats everyone like dirt) but it fails miserably. Crummy cinematography, really pathetic script (I couldn't believe the actors actually SPOKE these words without gagging or barfing), even worse acting, not ONE sympathetic character, and an ending that doesn't make a bit of sense, seeing it just tells us the same things we've been hearing since the beginning of the movie! This film actually makes the characters in "The Boys in the Band" seem like positive gay men! Also, this "group" of people just shows a VERY small portion of the gay society. It also portrays every gay man as a vicious queen. I can't believe a gay man wrote and directed this movie. Talk about "internalized homophobia"! A total waste of time (I can't say talent). DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE!!!!!!

I went with a group of friends, and those who were expecting a comedy (romantic or otherwise) were sorely disappointed. This movie is a merciless indictment of a certain superficial, vicious subgroup within the gay community. In fact, if this movie were your entire view into the gay subculture, it would probably justify the whole ex-gay movement for you. (The character of Stewart probably signed up with Exodus after the events in this film.) It reminded me of Larry Kramer's Faggots in the way it tried to address the lack of genuine feeling and community within its target group.

While I agree that the acting and technical aspects of this film are sorely lacking, I had no problem ignoring the form and focusing on the content. Yes, it's just a movie about a cad who happens to be gay, but I can't think of another movie with this subject in the past 20 years. Most gay films these days seem afraid to turn a mirror on any part of its audience and say "you are the villain", which this movie does. I found it quite difficult to sit through the first half hour, during which we are introduced to two despicable gay men (Christopher and Larry) and two merely insufferable ones (Tom and David). Once Stewart showed up though, it was easier to feel something (other than disgust) for someone in this film, even though it was pretty inevitable what was going to happen to the poor guy.

As for the ending, it was no more out-of-left-field than the ending of Looking For Mr Goodbar, and at least no one wound up dead for no good reason in this movie (although even suggesting it might happen was a big mistake on the director's part).

This movie IS poorly acted and put together, but it's unique in its subject matter, and I think that makes it worth seeing.

This is supposedly a satire of the shallowness of certain types of gays (they're called "twinks," "Gym Bunnies" and "Chelsea Boys" where I am) who are rich, overly groomed and superficial. It follows one guy, a shallow heartbreaker, as he falls in love with someone not of his "class."

A HUGE problem is the acting. I felt that a lot of the lines would have been funny if the actors could have sold them well. With a satire like this, the actors need to go at lines like "Are you telling me you dated someone who doesn't work out?" with absolutre sincerity, but what we get is a sort of "I'm just an actor, I'm not really like this, see" kind of irony. It kills the entire script. Lines that were funny when I read them in a review are absolutely flat on screen. One gets the impression the director asked his friends to be in the movie, and the result is the slightly embarrassed feeling of watching community theater.

Thematically, the movie is VERY tame. It doesn't really go far in satirizing its characters, and ends up in some ways reinforcing their viewpoints. A character who is not rich and doesn't work out is seen as SO DIFFERENT it's SHOCKING that our main character would even BE SEEN with him! So much for embracing diversity, huh? Near the end our protagonist is upbraided for not calling a guy when he said he would and basically being a playboy. Since when is this a crime in gay circles? Did he say he was a virgin and that they would be married? The effect one leaves the theater with is oe of those superficial types saying (and we've all heard it) "Oh I'm so superficial, it's awful" when you know they don't really mean it and won't change. I was curious to see WHO would go to see this movie, and was disappointed to see it's the very audience the movie pretends to criticize. They seemed absolutely unfazed.

But the fact that this movie DOES examine these attitudes at all I think makes it worth a viewing. It's one of those that's better to talk about than to sit through. And, if you're attracted to those kinds of hairless chiseled body types, there is ample chest on display... though if you're seeing the film for that reason, anything it has to say, I suspect, would be irrelevant to you.

--- Check out website devoted to bad, cheesy and gay movies: www.cinemademerde.com

Just what I needed, a gay "Your Friends and Neighbors." Not. Add to the down, tired material dialogue that sounded as if it were being read off cue cards, boring camera work, dull locales, and endless conversations, often as people plodded along in some park. Ugh! What a disappointment! I kept waiting for it to get better. It didn't.