All the Rage

There really isn't any reason at all to hate Chris...or is there? He of the strong jaw, sculpted physique, high-paying job and high-rent apartment is wanted by every guy in town, and he knows it. As proof, he has the "little black box" stuffed full of phone numbers. So what if he'll never use any of them? They're just trophies; notches on his belt. That doesn't make him a bad person, does it? It's just that there's always another guy, just waiting to be bumped into, at the gym, in a bar, on the street or who knows where. So when Chris begins falling for Stewart - who's cute but not gorgeous, doesn't work out and is a little bit shy - his friends may be surprised, but no one's more surprised than Chris himself.

Well, that's the premise, and I'm afraid it's all the good news there is. What could have been a sweet, if derivative, story is hobbled by mannered, stagey performances (with the exception of David Vincent as Stewart), uncertain direction and an 11th-hour plot turn that comes out of nowhere.

If this film is sending any message, it seems to be, "We rich, beautiful people experience pain, too - when, for the first time in our lives, something doesn't work out the way we want it to," but it also appears that writer-director Roland Tec is indulging in a little dramatic score-settling. Who among we mortals hasn't wanted to see that full-of-himself "has it all" guy get brought down a peg or two? But the overwrought denouement which seeks to bring this about belongs in another film entirely.

The narrative is punctuated throughout by little "confessionals" in arty black & white (which sometimes go on waaaaaay too long) wherein, addressing the viewer, Chris muses about himself, and what he wants in a man and...well, that's about it. If these interludes are meant to garner sympathy for the character, they fail. If, on the other hand, they're meant to point up his shallowness and self-absorption, they do quite nicely. "I'm not an a**hole," Chris assures us. To paraphrase Bette Davis, but ya ARE, Chris. Ya ARE an a**hole.

Although unsatisfying, ALL THE RAGE is far from the worst gay-themed film you'll ever see (that raspberry still goes, for my money, to "The Last Year"), but there isn't any compelling reason to see it in the first place, either. Of course, you can't know that until you have seen it, but you could just take my word for it.

This film is awful. The writing is tolerable but the acting is atrocious. The director was so in love with his own infantile pathos that he includes long long shots of guys looking tragic. If this film had a competent editor, it might have achieved mediocre status. As we saw with the Da Vinci Code, when the main actor is flat or bad, no matter what you do the rest of the movie will fail. And the main actor is not just bad, he is utterly inept. Think of the pathetic attempts at dialog in the 12 seconds of every porn film prior to getting down to business--our main actor is as bad if not worse than that.

The only reason I am even bothering to write this review is to talk about the love interest in the film, David Vincent. So far as I can tell, this is his only credit. That's a shame. His performance was subtle and nuanced. If this was his only acting credit, he could have quit his day job and made it as an actor. In the extras on the DVD you can see him reading for another part, the part of the hook up at the very end of the film. That scene in the film is particularly pathetic and tonally wrong; but from the screen test, you can see that if David Vincent had played that part, he could have carried it off with aplomb. Wherever you are, David Vincent, there is no doubt that you could have had a career in film.

As for the rest of the folks, including the director, don't quit your day jobs.

Just what I needed, a gay "Your Friends and Neighbors." Not. Add to the down, tired material dialogue that sounded as if it were being read off cue cards, boring camera work, dull locales, and endless conversations, often as people plodded along in some park. Ugh! What a disappointment! I kept waiting for it to get better. It didn't.

As a gay man, I can honestly say I HATED this film. It does TRY to show a certain type of gay man (obssessed with the gym, high-paying job, can't commit, treats everyone like dirt) but it fails miserably. Crummy cinematography, really pathetic script (I couldn't believe the actors actually SPOKE these words without gagging or barfing), even worse acting, not ONE sympathetic character, and an ending that doesn't make a bit of sense, seeing it just tells us the same things we've been hearing since the beginning of the movie! This film actually makes the characters in "The Boys in the Band" seem like positive gay men! Also, this "group" of people just shows a VERY small portion of the gay society. It also portrays every gay man as a vicious queen. I can't believe a gay man wrote and directed this movie. Talk about "internalized homophobia"! A total waste of time (I can't say talent). DO NOT SEE THIS MOVIE!!!!!!

The great thing about movies like "All the Rage" is that they remind you that movie making isn't as easy as it looks. I've seen some pretty bad movies ("Showgirls", anything with Molly Ringwald or Pia Zadora) and this "film" is definitely up there with some of the worst of them. And this film fails in every category: acting (those "introspective" moments where the lead addresses the camera directly! Yikes!), script, directing (or lack thereof), cinematography (don't drink and shoot), and the hair! Oh! The hair...

But that's not always a bad thing.

If you know that a movie is going to be lousy right from the start, like "All the Rant", you can kick back and scream with laughter and pray to God you've found yourself sitting on a yet undiscovered camp classic. This movie just became more gruesome as it moved along (or didn't move along). By the credits everyone in the theater was either in stunned silence or laughing hard enough to soil themselves.

On another note, it's great that gay themed movies are starting to come out more regularly so the gay community doesn't have to LOVE whatever is handed out. I became a little tired or rewinding the "Maurice" tape...

I'd much rather see a movie that fails on all counts rather than a mediocre snooze fest that a lot of movies today seem to be.

Bravo! If you're going to be bad, be REALLY bad. Make sure you see this car accident.