Race You to the Bottom

This film is about the sexual relationships of a bisexual man and a heterosexual woman, who go on a trip together to research for a newspaper article.

Judging from the film length, I guessed that the plot is probably not so well developed, and there is little to be conveyed. Unfortunately, this turns out to be true. I feel that there are not enough character development to make the characters connect with the viewers. There are not enough subplots to make the film interesting either. Many of the momentary flashbacks could have been expanded to full scenes, such as Nathan and Maggie walking around San Francisco having fun together. This would serve as better story development, and to increase the film's runtime. It is a pity that this film turns out not to be as captivating and interesting as it could have been.

An arrogant jackass meets an airhead. This was a total waste of time. Not sure what the writer was trying to do but it didn't work.

The best acting was done by the car.

The plot is simple. A straight girl and a très camp nominally bisexual boy go on a road trip and have a lot of sex and bicker.

The problem with the movie is completely in the writing. The dialogue is monotonous, and not in the least believable. It is some naïve straight person's fantasy of what gay people are like. It lacks humour and novelty. It feels like ordinary people talking just to pass the time.

The gay sex scenes are quite Victorian. The characters don't even disrobe. The actual sex is discreetly off camera. The raciest thing you see is a hand on an arm. In contrast, the heterosexual scenes are very in your face. That is cheating and insulting in movie that bills itself about being about gay characters.

Cole Williams in particular does the best with the limp material, breathing some life into it.

The very plot of the movie echoes that infuriating Christian lie that being gay is a choice and all that is needed is some heterosex to convert even the feyest boy.

There is some quite fun music and animated dancing, the best part of this movie, unfortunately a small part.

I agree with another reviewer here about the film's decent technical quality, but I wouldn't extend that to acting. Amber Benson is good, actually, but the rest of the cast is pretty much sub-par. I particularly thought many of Cole Williams' lines were read poorly.

The story could have been interesting, but the script didn't do it justice. The dialog sounded forced and stilted much of the time. It just didn't ring true, didn't sound like true life. When the plot conflict develops, I couldn't quite see the reason for it. There didn't seem to be anything happening that hadn't happened before so I couldn't understand the characters' reactions.

It was difficult not to compare this movie to Sideways. Not that they had all that much in common except the location, but that was enough to have me constantly thinking of how much better this movie could have been.

I never believed for a minute that Cole Williams' character was a true bisexual and therein lies the flaw in RACE YOU TO THE BOTTOM. He's an arrogant, self-centered writer (whose talent is also something of a line of BS), who is acting like a spoiled baby and it is hard to muster up any sympathy for him or any of the other characters in this road-to-nowhere film. The DVD commentary tries to explain away their behavior by emphasizing that that the characters are in their 20's and this is their 'time' to be self-centered and let ego rule. Maybe if the film-maker took a solid stance on how HE feels about them, we'd care too. But he didn't and we don't so race to the credits and get it over with.