Coffee Date

A frightened-seeming heterosexual in his mid-30s and an eye-rolling gay salon owner "meet cute" and, despite their differences, become movie buddies; still, everyone close to the straight guy misinterprets this friendship as an intimate relationship, causing him to question his own sexual preference. Simplistic, unamusing comedy of misunderstandings, with overdrawn, 'kooky' supporting characters and a basic lack of verisimilitude in the leading ones. Strictly as a superficial light entertainment, this low-budget film is relatively harmless and friendly enough; dig deeper however and it's really rather offensive--both to straight and gay audiences. Jonathan Bray's Todd, with his perpetually astonished expression, is like a walking loaf of white bread, complete with uptight clothes and a clenched jaw; neither sex could loosen this man up...and neither sex would take the time to. *1/2 from ****

How straight is straight sexually and emotionally ? Or To be or not to be ? After a viewing this rather distant in the past film of sexual ambiguity I was left with a feeling that I had watched a semi-comic film that had rather shaky answers to both of these questions. Jonathan Bray plays the straight man who accidentally meets up with a gay man on a blind date called Kelly. Bray thinks he is going to meet a woman, and finds to his gay panic that he has landed himself on the wrong side of his sexual orientation. Panic subsides when he realises he likes the man, and for most of the duration of the film he verbally fights off anyone who comes to the conclusion that he is gay and not straight. Witty lines flow quite nicely, and the film has a lot of smiles and laughs to offer and the acting was mostly good. I wondered at the beginning if mister straight was gay after all and I will give no spoilers except to say that rather heavy handed signals in the dialogue led to a rather obvious conclusion. A twist at the end concerning mister straight man's brother came as a surprise, if a rather a stereotypical one. In fact there are quite a few stereotypes of gay men in this film and to a certain extent I thought mister straight was rather condescendingly nice to them. Two scenes I rather liked. The inevitable shower scene so often used in gay films is shown before the film even starts, and it is mister straight under the shower looking the perfect dream of sexual desire. This will throw some viewers off course as he is handsome and imaginatively for the viewer ' available,' and the second scene is a rather nasty homophobic attack that undermines the comic premise in the film that most people are gay friendly. I quite enjoyed my own accidental viewing of this gay film of the past, but came away with the feeling that a sequel to the film may have added something more, and something better for the satisfaction of a lot of gay viewers.

This film will not be too much of an attraction to a straight guy (because I have no idea how their mind works) but it sure captured my attention from the very first scene until the end. There may be a few occasions that are too good to be true or unrealistically light-weight along the way but overall it will surely capture you too if you are gay or into gay films. There is one particular thing that makes this film stand out is the ending or shall I say 'the closure'. It does not end the way a conventional gay film ends and which makes it more appealing. "Coffee Date" really made my day.

This film is so nearly there. There are more than one or two genuinely heart rending moments in it. There are several characters of almost three dimensions. A little more work and it could have been all the things it almost is - subtle, touching and funny. It's just slightly amateur. Not much, but enough to take the edge off what it could have been. TLA Releasing seem to put out a fair number of movies a bit like this. Sweet tales of modern gay life. Gay movies you want to love, that sometimes bring a tear (just the one) to the eye and have you laughing (a couple of times), but that don't quite cut deep enough to make them memorable or watchable twice. This coffee-date does have charm and looks, but he lacks substantial charisma.

(There is also a technical problem with Coffee Date; the sound mixing is all over the place. One minute the background is high and the dialogue low, then an angle changes and it's all different again. This is a pretty basic requirement these days, decent sound design and mixing).

If you have a couple of free hours on a lazy afternoon and you are not looking for anything too challenging to fill them, you might try watching this low-budget comedy on cable. It certainly wouldn't be the worst way to spend your time, but the problem with this little film is that it certainly wouldn't be the best way to spend your time either. Jonathan Bray and Wilson Cruz are certainly competent actors who play likable and attractive leads who meet-cute in the setup for this sweet and goofy comedy of errors. Along the way, the film even manages to achieve a couple of touching moments and a few small laughs. Nonetheless, the story suffers by the screenwriter taking a premise best suited to a movie short and stretching it thin to fill a feature length film. The film piles improbability upon improbability to keep the plot trudging forward and it throws in tired clichés and cheap laughs as a poor substitute for genuine wit and sophisticated character development. The sincere effort of the two lead actors keeps the whole flimsy story together for most of the film, but eventually even their strong acting skills can no longer compensate for the ridiculous plot developments and trite dialog.