Anything Once

I consider myself lucky to bump into this short film on the net. The story is simple but nice. It's about the first time a straight guy makes love with another guy. After thinking about it for quite some time, he finally decides to go for it. Guess who he does it with...

A friendship story. At the first sigh, too naive. In fact, really great for honesty, simple story, for touching dialogue and for a sort of picture of near reality. Two guys and a sort of experiment. After discoveries, the best answer to the questions about them. The basic virtue of film - its lovely freshness and the natural performances.

I very much enjoyed watching Anything Once. I watched it twice. The story was simple, well told, and the naturalistic feel lent itself well to making the film believable and the characters likeable. There was a refreshing lack of high camp, and the character motivations seemed honest. Nice acting performances all around, not stellar, but I'd like to see these folks act again.

Will Joey break the habit of a lifetime and have sex with a woman? Will super-straight Mike have sex with a man? Will they try Anything Once? It's worth the 25 minutes or so it takes to find out.

Obviously filmed on a budget, the actors are cute and sincere and this seems to be an earnest effort to a better than average job with this material.

While the straight bar scene is uncomfortably cringe-worthy, the gay scenes are short, omitted entirely or just obliquely suggested. Overall, not a bad effort but we've come a LONG way in 20 years.