Longhorns

This film is a delight from the moment it starts and doesn't let up until the very end - didn't even take time for a pit stop I was so caught up in the playfulness of this film. The cast is uniformly hot - all the guys and the gals too - lots of flesh - especially full frontal nudity - in fact all the male leads show it all - very unexpected and fun, fun, fun - not much of a story but the cast is so great to look at who cares? Some incredible eroticism done in a most unusual way - which catches you completely by surprise. In fact this film is full of surprises. A real winner. The Texas shots were all great - really gave you a sense of the way Texas looks - that part also surprised me.

I was honestly not expecting too much. This was obviously a low-budget, indie production, so I readied myself for all the inevitable flaws that this usually entails.

I was pleasantly surprised: the production values weren't incredible, but they were definitely better than one might expect, the script was smart, touching and funny, and the acting was much better than I anticipated, especially the two leads. I think what particularly worked for me was the humor, it added a nice, knowing wink to the loveliness of this little gem.

This is the story of a Texan "all-American" boy at college who seemingly conforms to the stereotype in every way back in the early 80's. When he meets an openly gay student, he has to confront himself for the first time in his life. Or does he?

Before the end of Longhorns all four of the macho frat guys from the University of Texas get down and naked and show their gay side. The only one comfortable in his sexuality is the Latino student Derek Efrain Villanueva who is out and heads the campus gay organization. But he's also the happiest of the lot.

Longhorns begins with a sex scene as Jacob Newton is getting ridden hard by some coed and we see he's fantasizing about being a mechanical bull being ridden by some fellow Longhorn. Doing some tutoring is Villanueva and I have to say he is one seductive young man. Believe me seeing Newton and Villanueva took me back a few decades and I know exactly how Newton felt fulfilling what he really wanted.

It doesn't happen all at once though and Newton is still trying to keep up his good old boy image. Turns out that his friends Dylan Vox and Stephen Matzke are also doing a little sexual exploring when some promised females don't arrive.

And big man on campus Kevin Held might be homophobic, but he does need a passing grade in English.

Longhorns is a gay youthful romp through the Reagan years in that bluest of states Texas. You could probably make the same film now and date it as contemporary, attitudes have changed a bit, but it's slow.

And this review is dedicated to the late Donald 'Butch' Buchecker of Consohocken, Pennsylvania who made it right for me.

This could have been a really good movie, but it wore out its one-joke theme - straight guys who love nothing better than masturbating together while watching porn - about the third time it played out. That may be a powerful and persistent fantasy and an infallible source of amusement for lots of gay men, but it's not for me, and watching it in a movie gets old very fast. It wasn't even remotely believable the first time it happened, and it got less believable every time.

The second recurring theme has one man stripping completely naked and standing still for another, fully clothed man to ogle. Each of the five main characters did it once each, with another of the five (two, in one instance) as the clothed ogler. Was that supposed to be funny too, or was it just an extremely clumsy way to get as much full frontal (but as sterile as a nun) nudity as possible into the movie? So the movie is almost unbearably contrived, stupid and unfunny. It has two redeeming strengths, though.

Three of the main cast members are genuine Southerners who talk with real Southern accents, not the Hollywood fake-Southern accents non-Southern actors always affect (even Meryl Streep can't get it right) in movies. Non-Southerners must not be able to tell the difference, but I can, and as a long-time transplant to the North, hearing people who talk like me on screen warms my heart and points out how very, very rarely it happens. Even Southern actors almost never use their native accents in movies, which is sad.

The movie's other strength is the cast, particularly Derek Villanueva and Dylan Vox, who shine (Jacob Newton, though sort of cute, is a little weak as the lead). I wish someone would remake Longhorns with the same cast but as a serious movie, not a very lame, very unfunny comedy.

Gay-themed movies have traditionally be grated on a curve, and in my opinion, this one stands on its own. It has a story, good acting (a little over-acting by one character...but it actually fits), a plot and some good full-frontal...yeah, that really helped in this movie. It was a bit gratuitous, but heck, this is a movie about sex in college years, so it was appropriate. It's a very light-hearted "coming out" movie that has a very good moral to it, and even some sharp insights; the main character treated other openly gay characters the same way HE was treated, specifically by the guys he was attracted to. So, he felt/learned this was "normal" behavior. I would highly recommend it as a date-movie or light brain-candy.