The Adonis Factor

Beefcake everywhere you look, and why? "The Adonis Factor" takes to three cities to investigate (primarily Los Angeles, San Francisco and Atlanta, with a side trip to Palm Springs). Director and narrator Christopher Hines is on his second tour of this turf after his "The Butch Factor" in 2009, which was broader in focus. In "Adonis," he asks why big beefy men are the template for 'beauty' and talks to a bunch of them.

He also sidelines with talks with Titan Films, a plastic surgeon, a nude yoga instructor and a bunch of WeHo Twinks (who are all about ten years away from serious therapy). While the Adonises in the film fall into the spectrum of kind of sweet to genuinely annoying, it's the other interviews that shed light on the subject. The Goth Model Chris Catalyst is the most intriguing as a man who discovered his alternative nature and used it to his advantage. The trip to Lazy Bear is almost as interesting. One point I really wish Hines had spent more time on is the aging Colt Model as he muses on becoming the invisible former star. Which is amazing enough in the fact that he still looks like a million beefy bucks.

There are enough beefy men here of various ages (and several of them nekkid) to intrigue the voyeur viewers, but the underlying message is that the subset of A-Listers who cluster with fellow A-Listers aren't always as beautiful as you think. A trip into some smaller cities might have given the film more depth, then again, once goes where the pickings are best. Granted that finding poorly adjusted muscleheads in LA is like shooting sharks in a barrel, "The Adonis Factor" does a pretty good job at balancing the sexy and the smart.

As a gay man, I was pretty embarrassed watching this and couldn't make it to the end. Do queens like this really still exist? The whole "film" felt like an ad for World Gym or New York Sports Club. The people "interviewed" all struck me as super stupid and they all said the exact same thing: "I used to feel ugly, but now that I go to the gym I have more boyfriends." I wasn't expecting much when I spotted this on Netflix, but the director didn't even meet my low expectations. And a documentary? Did the director skip the documentary course at film school? There are a couple moments when the film pretends to expose a serious topic, for example drugs or eating disorders, and the only way you can tell is because the incessant background club music pauses for a few seconds. Otherwise, this struck me as a film trying to romanticize the mid-to-late 90's, when urban queens were required by law to work out. But for a more accurate look at contemporary gay experience, you're advised to watch Modern Family.

Superficiality is spread out in the United States (and elsewhere) like Monsanto seeds. This documentary reflects frivolous mainstream notion that is common in the country (from images in college bulletins, insurance companies' catalogs, to mass media, etc.) upon the gay community.

"The Adonis Factor" is a follow up documentary to an earlier "The Butch Factor" film, but I liked The Adonis Factor more as it looked at shallowness and misleading values from various perspectives and pointed to numerous limitations to people's attempts for perfect looks and body images.

As it is mentioned in the documentary, the magazines as well as men's minds are obsessed with visual attractiveness of good-looking and big-muscled gentlemen; however, neither public nor media producers seem to be bothered by this or offering alternatives. This behavior only reinforces the notion of superficiality. This document brings the topic right into the screen and allows discussion, alternatives, different perspectives and valuable feedback by the psychologist at the end (I had to write down his speech as I really liked it).

I wish that the director Christopher Hines would allow more space for alternatives to superficiality and consequences to such lifestyle , but this is surely a good start as such aspects are not commonly discussed in gay productions anyways and are rather just lived upon.

This doco manages to be slick and watchable, but feels like something you'd see on a gay TV cable channel as a bit of light entertainment, rather than a documentary that's going to dig deep or tell you anything new. Many guys are interviewed, with lots of them showing off their bodies, but almost none of them have anything interesting to say. And I'm not blaming them, as it doesn't sound like the filmmakers cared to ask interesting questions to start with. Maybe the film's main aim was just to get as many 'adonis'-like men on screen as possible. Maybe they should have stuck to showing buff bods and kept it all light & humorous without pretending to go into the deeper questions. The main point of the film seems to be that some gay men put a lot of emphasis on how they look, which isn't exactly news. And all the potentially interesting topics are only touched on and then abandoned after a single soundbite. It would have been great for the filmmakers to go into the bigger questions rather than ignoring them - why does there seem to be a racial divide when it comes to what guys go to certain circuit parties? what kinds of trouble do guys get into when overdoing steroids or plastic surgery (just having an overly-plastic plastic surgeon admitting some guys go too far isn't really enough)? how do masculinity issues come into play when gay guys want to bulk up? what psychological or social issues lead some gay men to go to dangerous extremes? why can't some gay men be happy with themselves the way they are? what influence do the buff images in gay p*rn have? what about gay men outside the cities? There are so many questions that this film doesn't bother going into! It's one thing to be fit and healthy, but some of these men seem dangerously obsessed, but they aren't asked terribly probing questions, so we don't learn much about why they are that way. And some gay men who are less obsessed with their looks are included, but there's no real investigation into how they got that way either. So we end up with a brief tour of the subject, without understanding any of it any better. Like interviewing a beautiful woman and asking 'what's it feel like to be pretty'? So it's not a terrible documentary, and technically it's been well put together, but it's a fairly pointless one, and as a gay guy myself, I felt pretty alienated from most of the people in it.

I liked how it targeted on super obsession men with looking to be "hot" or the "part". Unfortunately, our gay community is superficial and most of them always want to be score of an 11, which does not exist.

Do we really need masculinity to define who we are and what we can attract? Why must the gym be our way to express our sexuality? Why does do muscles and prettiness be the happiness to your social life. What does the hell "be masculine" really mean on dating apps? It's amazing how most men would have achieve the "perfect" body but they still end up miserable because they can't find the "right" person or can't get the attention they want. Why can't gay men just be secure with themselves? It's so sad how looks play an obsessed role in the community and it segregates what and who we attract. Were so discriminatory towards one another in the community and it's almost better to stay single. I have a disdain for the gay community anyways so I think it's hilarious how us gay men would do anything for senseless gratification. Weather it be plastic surgery, implants, too much at the gym etc.. thank God there is a documentaries like these that exposes the real truth behind what makes the gay community. It's funny how people rated this movie negatively when there are people like these who do exist. I digest it through the movie. I enjoyed it.