Unsolved Suburbia

What is the law about citizen's arrest? Because the acting in this film (and I use the term loosely) is downright criminal. Especially from the men - and there are mostly men. While there may be some good things about UNSOLVED SUBURBIA, I couldn't see past the poor performances to find any. It is like a good chef cooking with rancid food - no good can come of it. The boys involved are not only poor actors, they are a scrawny lot who get naked at the drop of a hat. There are few women who are equally dreadful but they don't add up to much except jokes about lesbians and West Side Story. Avoid this film - it will not be a crime to miss it!

The idea of this movie was surely great: a crime happens and some people try to solve the mystery.

However the result is something in between everything. It has his funny moments, but they are rare. What are not rare are the moments that (almost) naked guys are visible. Nothing wrong with that as long as it fits in the story. Or you want to make a (soft) porn movie.

And then there is a voice over explaining everything, because it was too difficult to let the movie do so. The acting to another difficult part. A lot of the actors need some training if they every want to play a real part. But I doubt if that is their goal. Looks like they all had some fun in the few days this movie was made and didn't care about the result.

I gave the movie a 5/10 because of the idea and to stimulate other independent producers to get a lot of new stuff out, even if no or little budget is available.

With this film, my Thanksgiving Day gay movie marathon started out poorly, but it is by no means the worst way to spend 64 minutes.

But I'm going to do something unusual: I'm going to cut this film some slack. Why? How many allegedly comedic, multi-million dollar productions from big Hollywood studios tank at the box office? A lot - and this is because comedy is hard.

Obviously made on a shoestring, "Unsolved Suburbia" doesn't have the talent in front of or behind the camera to make a truly great comedy. The problems with this film are legion: the sound mix was horrible, the cinematography barely adequate and the direction somnambulistic. But it seems to me everyone involved tried hard to make a good movie... and it made my friends and I laugh.

Sure, when it comes to gay comedy, I'd rather watch Gregg Araki's "Nowhere" or "Kaboom," but "Unsolved Suburbia" isn't without its charms.

Not sure why my review for this item has been deleted 3 separate times (maybe the editors are friends with one of the producers?) but here goes: 1. There is a disproportionate amount of gratuitous nudity. If that's your thing, then read on. 2. The acting is BAD...as in "hey, ever been in a movie? Well, would you WANT to be?" kind of bad. 3. The plot was just ridiculous...assuming there really was one, because this just seemed like they were making things up as they go.

This "film" (and that is being very generous) literally comes off as a bunch of twinkish 20-somethings who do webcam-sex as their "day job" deciding to get together and do a feature-length project using the "acting styles" of anyone from "Pink Flamingos" (or any early John Waters movie). With plenty of inappropriate/gratuitous full frontal nudity and a very meandering plot line, and a lead who had a major acne flair-up during the shoot, which completely damaged the continuity between scenes...but hey, it's not like this were the worst thing this film had going for it...