Is It Just Me?

Young Nicholas Downs is an early 30 something gay man who is a successful on line columnist who can't get himself a date. The anonymity of the internet works well for him because he lacks a lot of personal self confidence. His roommate Adams Huss makes up for more than enough. He's a part time actor between gigs and earning nice money as a go go boy in gay bar where nightly his cowboy boots are stuffed with folding money.

One day his blog is answered by David Loren a really nice and charming Texas kid with the accent to match. Only he thinks he's answered the roommate's ad.

Cutting to the chase this is a 21st century version of the John Alden/Priscilla Mullins romance with a bit of Cyrano de Bergerac thrown in. It's nicely packaged in every sense of the phrase and the players are charming. There's a nice performance by Bruce Gray as the older gay roommate of Loren. We should all have a wise man like him in our gay lives.

And who could not fall in love with Loren's Texas drawl.

Some 5 minutes in the movie, our main lead, Nicholas, went to order a coffee, being treated extremely rudely by the coffee-bar boy, just because he is - at least the movie wanted us to believe - ugly enough to have a complicated coffee order. And instead of showing a spine, he acted as it was a completely normal thing. He also has a bi*chy straight girl-friend and annoying flatmate.

I disliked literally all of the characters of the movie in the first half - including beautiful but pale Xander (the second lead), for smiling like an idiot all the time, his old flatmate for being too curious about his life, Nicholas' boss and his secretary, basically, all characters that had any screen time.

However, somehow the movie turned out to be watchable, even enjoyable and cute. It's not, by any means, a great movie, but it's good enough to give you some emotions and stay entertained. The plot, despite being a bit stupid and easily solvable, still made some sense. And it shows the search for true love from the perspective of a guy most of us tend to believe we are - average, cute, romantic one. 5.5/10

Just saw this film at the NC Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, and I was shocked to see it only got 5/10 starts on here. I have to say this is at *least* 9 stars! As far as the "gay movie" genre goes, you can't go into one expecting Casablanca. The plot is not earth-shattering, and honestly it gets a bit hokey at times (maybe it got dragged out a bit too long). That said, this film is definitely on the top of my list of great gay movies! Bruce Gray really steals the show with his Ernie character; the audience was in stitches during all of his scenes. The ending made it all worth while, it may even bring a little tear to your eye. Absolutely fits the definition of "charming" :-)

Yes 'is it just me' is a well intentioned little film. But when did watching a gay movie become like watching a Christian film, or even worse a Tyler Perry movie! So many gay films of the last 10+ years have been so limp and predictable and this one is no exception. You know exactly what is going to happen and it features the usual gallery of gay indie clichés, the fag-hag, the slutty friend and the dryly funny/ miserable old queen. Thankfully the performances are good and characters likable. Believe me I get it, there's little money in gay cinema and we need our rom-coms too but we need more genre benders like Hellbent and Another Gay Movie, I can't keep watching the same story just to support gay indie films. Shelter did it best, that felt like a 90s movie, the glory days of gay cinema. Is it just me? I don't think so.

I liked the concept for this movie and the poster makes it look like a fun romantic comedy with-a-big-load-of-misunderstandings, which caused me to have big hopes it would live up to that.

Unfortunately everything from the main characters performance to the (honestly awful) dialogue to cutting and editing reminded me of the amateur movies of the sort you'd see high schoolers upload to youtube. They are fine and fun in their own medium, seen for what they are, but it did not do well as a full length film pretending to be professional. Unfortunate, because had the same movie been made with a better writer I think it would be a lot better.

Also, worth to notice: there are exactly three women in this entire movie. I don't mean characters, I'm talking out of everyone, background characters and all. That is honestly a little bit hilarious. Where does these people live?