Anything Once

I consider myself lucky to bump into this short film on the net. The story is simple but nice. It's about the first time a straight guy makes love with another guy. After thinking about it for quite some time, he finally decides to go for it. Guess who he does it with...

A friendship story. At the first sigh, too naive. In fact, really great for honesty, simple story, for touching dialogue and for a sort of picture of near reality. Two guys and a sort of experiment. After discoveries, the best answer to the questions about them. The basic virtue of film - its lovely freshness and the natural performances.

Will Joey break the habit of a lifetime and have sex with a woman? Will super-straight Mike have sex with a man? Will they try Anything Once? It's worth the 25 minutes or so it takes to find out.

Obviously filmed on a budget, the actors are cute and sincere and this seems to be an earnest effort to a better than average job with this material.

While the straight bar scene is uncomfortably cringe-worthy, the gay scenes are short, omitted entirely or just obliquely suggested. Overall, not a bad effort but we've come a LONG way in 20 years.

I very much enjoyed watching Anything Once. I watched it twice. The story was simple, well told, and the naturalistic feel lent itself well to making the film believable and the characters likeable. There was a refreshing lack of high camp, and the character motivations seemed honest. Nice acting performances all around, not stellar, but I'd like to see these folks act again.