Long-Term Relationship

A truly frightening film. Feels as if it were made in the early '90s by a straight person who wanted to show that gays are good, normal, mainstream-aspiring people. Retrograde to the point of being offensive, LTR suggests that monogamy and marriage are the preferred path to salvation for sad, lonely, sex-crazed gays. Wow! Who knew? The supporting characters are caricatures of gay stereotypes (the effeminate buffoon, the bitter, lonely queen, the fag hag, etc.) and the main characters are milquetoast, middle-class, middlebrow clones, of little interest.

As far as the romantic & ideological struggles of the main couple are concerned, there's not much to say: we've seen it all before, and done much better.

Long-Term Relationship is one of those films that will go down as a must see for gay film lovers. First off it is very funny. The script is witty at every turn but doesn't lose sight of it's story because of it.

The cast is great. The stand out is Mattew Montgomery. He holds the whole film together. With his good looks and quiet charm, Matthew treads along the zany world of his friends and works on getting his long-term relationship perfect. The other characters are pretty well rounded too. And what is a gay film without cute guys? The cast is full of them but as far as cuteness goes, I am partial to Jeremy Lucas who plays Vincent.

The romance in the film is so natural. The characters of Glenn and Adam develop a real relationship complete with the way they talk to each other to having relationship rules as well.

All and all this is a nice writing and directing debut by Rob Williams. It is an intelligent and funny film about relationships and gay culture. I look forward to seeing other films Rob does.

Movie had some good acting and good moments (though obviously pretty low budget), but bad rating due to basic premise being badly developed. The main point of conflict between the two leads doesn't play out in a realistic manner at all. There are a few scenes where they disagree because of it, but no discussions of any great depth that would explain how they can be together while seeing the world so differently, especially since the employment of Glenn is so wound up in this part of his life (and Adam is active enough with his that he supports it with time and money.) Also, several times Glenn is portrayed negatively for being the way he is (apologizing to Adam for his past) while Adam is shown to be upstanding and "traditional," which the film proclaims to be the "good" way in the end. I don't like being preached to like that. I attended a discussion session with the director after viewing LTR, and he said that he presented this conflict between them because, if he was in Glenn's shoes (and he said he does in real life relate to Glenn's view) that he could never date someone with Adam's views. Well, then, I think he should have done a much better job explaining how Glenn could do it in the film. Also, director said he directed this, his first movie, only after reading (Directing For Dummies.) Directing was not that bad, but far from a top notch effort. I've seen worse, but I rarely leave films feeling this frustrated.

Long Term Relationship (LTR) is so poorly written and flatly presented it makes the typically weak programming on the TV channel Logo look like Masterpiece Theatre.

LTR is supposed to be a comedy drama. The comedy consists of terrible one liners or sight gag montages. There's some frank joking about sexual incompatibility and discussion of supposedly insurmountable political differences but everything LTR attempts to address or make a joke about has been done before and much better.

The story is standard romantic comedy fluff with spikes of drama thrown in. The writing sounds like a college freshman's first script. Most of the characters are terrible clichés, the side characters in particular. There's a supposedly wise and sexy Asian female best friend of the main character, her husband who hangs out with gay guys but is utterly clueless about anything gay (Har!), a couple of mildly flaming constantly quipping gay guys, the professor, and Mary Ann. The last two aren't really in LTR but the side characters are as one dimensional as old TV sitcom characters. Except the acting in LTR isn't as good as the acting in a TV sitcom.

The two leads acting is competent (when they fall flat it's mainly due to the terrible writing) and their characters have some interesting aspects...Interesting enough that it makes you wonder what a better writer and director would have done with them.

The most notable thing about LTR (other than some pleasant but completely out of place piano music) is that the gay characters all have hair that looks as if they just rolled out of bed or possible cut it themselves. If believable hair was the goal it's LTR's one success. But the reason the hair is even noticed at all is that everything else about the film is so dull and obvious it makes the hair really stand out.

I loved it. At first I was concerned about the "stereotypical" depiction of casual gay-sex, but I think it was necessary, and that most if not all of the remaining nudity was within the context of the relationship. So it wasn't gratuitous or distracting. Which was fortunate, because the story itself and the subplots were rich and integral to the story. But it still had that constant tinge of spontaneity throughout. Enjoyable, nice flow.

So if you like it, make sure to watch it again with the commentary on.

The commentary was AS entertaining, if not more entertaining than the movie itself. In a completely different way of course, but don't miss that. It was an hour and a half of ROFLMAO. Plus you get to see all the adorable shots of the movie again.