To see my review in video format, check it out on youtube at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4LRwflDGoNk
This gay themed murder mystery that takes place at a Loft in Tampa, Florida, occupied mostly by gay characters, has a lot going on for it. Some of it makes this film a guilty pleasure and the rest of it a hard sit.
The movie focuses on the murder of an unlikable character, Justin Jaymes (Tom Goss), a gold- digging and self-obsessed wannabe singer who is found dead in the Loft pool. His friends and frienemies are all suspects. Former P.I. Jim Noble (Scott Sell) is hired by the only person who seemed to like Justin for...reasons...to try and find out who killed Justin, since this takes place in a movie world where the police are useless.
My problem with this movie was that the murder mystery the movie is focused on is of the murder of an unlikable character that we don't feel sorry for or any intrigue over. If the reason to make him unlikable was to give a motivation for killing him, then why should the audience care? This movie is also really heavy on dialog. My own personal way of looking at entertainment is this: "Movies are about action, Plays are about dialog, and Novels are about inner-thoughts." This movie was all about dialog and would probably work better as a play, I lost interest in what was going on because of this. There was also the problem with the acting and direction. The actors seemed unsure of how to act or play their parts in every scene, so their performances bombed. The screenplay is full of information that goes unexplained or exposition that was only put in to make the film feature length and meets the time requirements to be featured as a feature length movie at whatever film festival this movie was submitted to. Like Erik Van Looy's "The Loft." [2015] (Other than taking place at a Loft) this film features characters that we have no idea why in the hell they would be friends in the first place, and spend a good portion of the movie having constant revelations and constant conversations.
What I did like about this film was the cast was really sexy to look at, the parts of these gay characters are actually played by gay actors, and for a gay movie it did not rely on sex scenes or full frontal male nudity to sell DVDs, it focused more on trying to tell a story.
But overall: This is a guilty pleasure film that may make some audiences laugh at the bad acting, or cringe at the bad directing.
