Poster Boy

So, the hand cam got on my nerves rather quickly.

Spent the first part of the movie trying to figure out what kind of film I was watching. The film is obviously set up to be a "worlds collide" situation. Perhaps I was expecting that those 2 worlds, or their separateness, would have been better defined from the beginning.

The whole project comes off like an amateur attempt judging by the lack of polish. The lighting is crap. The camera work is distracting. The casting is good. The dialogue is effective but the plot jumped around too much for me to follow. Makes me feel like I have A.D.D.

The technical flaws kept me out of the film and I was left with an overpowering sense of watching a film rather than experiencing it.

I just saw this at the Outfar Film Festival in Phoenix, and I have to say I was disappointed. The plot had the making of a really engrossing story: The handsome college-age son of a Southern Right-wing Senator is a closeted gay, and is "outed" in an attempt to destroy the re-election of his father. Depending on how the story was scripted, I anticipated feeling sympathy for the son, anger toward those who invade his private life for political gain. Or, the could have scripted so that one feels the "closet-case" got what he deserved. Unfortunately, the way the film was scripted and filmed destroyed any chance of achieving an engrossing story or feeling anything for the characters involved.

The story is told in the form of a rather obnoxious reporter interviewing Henry, the senator's son. As he describes the events leading up to his outing, we fade in & out of the scenes. This format has been used successfully several times in the past. It doesn't work this time. By the end of the film I felt as thought I'd watched a bad documentary, just witnessing the events, feeling nothing for the people involved. The other problem is the main characters seem almost schizophrenic in their personalities. One moment Henry is throwing the suit & tie clad Young Republican into the pool; the next moment he's bonding with him and hiring him a hooker when he learns he's still a virgin. We first meet Anthony as an "out there" Act Up! activist; we next see him a sensitive best friend of an AIDS-stricken woman. Next he's telling her that he also had sex with her boyfriend that gave her AIDS; we next see him caring about Henry, whom he had vowed to "out".

By the time Henry is outed, I was looking at my watch and waiting for the ending credits. Too bad. Good plot done wrong in about every detail. Better luck next time.

This is on of the darkest gay-themed films released in America I have seen. Most reviews have not been favorable, so I'll do my best to tell you what I liked, and what I didn't like. This is not a bad film, a 1 or 2 star rating seems quite unfair, but reviews are subjective. It doesn't hold a candle to other gay films I have enjoyed, but the subject is very different.

Why I Gave It 7 Stars: It was a solid 6, leaning towards 8 in the beginning, and towards the end, so I compromised. A solid B- film you might say.

The Story: It centers around Henry (played by Matt Newton). Henry is the son of a ultra conservative Senator from the south. Think of "The Birdcage", minus anything to laugh at. Henry is also gay. The film, told in "flashback style" as Henry tells his story to a reporter unfolds over the course of 6 months. Basically, Henry comes out, and family chaos follows. But not for long, as we're almost to the end of the film.

What I Liked: Personally, I liked the edge. This was almost more of a docu-drama, albeit a fictitious one, which could easily be based on truth. The actors were good to very good, the overall production was good as well.

What I Did Not Like: I was nearly half-way through the film, starting to get concerned where it was going, before all the character/story sub-plots were connected. The second half of the movie was strongest.

The Rest of the Characters: Besides our lead, Henry, we also focus on his stereo-typical bigot Republican Father/Senator, and his "senator's wife" Mother. And to the mix, a straight girl Izzi, and her gay male friend Anthony, whose relationship was unusual at best. Anthony and Henry meet under some unusual circumstances at a college party.

The Ending: I never give away specifics, but let's just say it's not a "Brady Bunch" wrap-up. If the ending was all tidied up for viewers, I would have knocked this down to a 5 or 6. Everything about the film was somewhat gritty, dark, "off". It's not the type of film that usually comes out of the USA. We usually have to watch films like this with sub-titles, so kudos to Here! films and those involved for producing the film.

Final Thoughts: This is not a laugh-out-loud sex romp. No, not at all. It's a good story trying to make a point about politics, sexuality and family values. It does all of those well.

Unrelated Chatter: Jack Noseworthy, the actor who played Anthony also starred in "The Brady Bunch Movie" and in his early years, "Cats" in the theater. Matt Newton (Henry) has appeared on the "Gilmore Girls" and "Judging Amy".

The drama POSTER BOY begins with such a solid premise, the screenplay could have practically written itself. Perhaps it would have been better if it had. Though certainly well acted by some of the cast and directed by first-timer Zak Tucker with a degree of skill, the film is bogged down by its script; written by Lecia Rosenthal and Ryan Shiraki, it is laden with preachy platitudes and simple-minded stereotypes. You can sense that the writers weren't satisfied with just hoping to pen a good story, they wanted to make it an "important" film, which is all well and good, unless you sacrifice the drama for the dogma.

Matt Newton plays Henry Kray, the college boy son of Jack Kray, an outspoken conservative senator facing a re-election vote. The son is gay and very much in the closet -- though apparently quite sexually active; while the father is a "family values" candidate with a history of particularly harsh and homophobic stands on various issues. The clueless Jack bullies Henry into being active in his re-election campaign as a way of reaching out to younger voters.

This is a great start; especially if you add in a plot twist wherein Henry unknowingly has a one-night stand with Anthony, a gay rights activist who has a particularly strong dislike for Senator Jack, his politics and his political party. Henry finds himself caught between a father who wishes to exploit his son's youthful and apparently straight-arrow image and a lover who hopes to out him in a cheap attempt at embarrassing the father. This is a nice set up for a potentially complex drama, maybe even an intriguing thriller.

Making an admirable effort to establish an Altmanesque feel to the film, director Tucker finds his attempts at realism at odds with the script that seems contrived and phony as the screenwriters fumble the material in infuriatingly inept ways. For one thing, as played with a perpetual snarl by Michael Lerner, Sen. Jack Kray isn't just a conservative, the story goes out of its way to make sure we know that he is (and by extension, all conservatives are) controlling and hypocritical and poor at parenting to boot. He isn't just a conservative, he is "the Nazi of North Carolina" whose campaign seemingly is financed by the tobacco industry. Gay issues aside, it is not surprising that Henry has great animosity toward his dad. And that is the problem: The film quells part of its strongest source of drama from scene one by obliterating even the slightest suggestion of there being a genuine loving bond between father and son. Indeed, the entire film is told via flashbacks as Henry spills his guts to a reporter in what seems to be a spiteful attempt to get back at his father.

The film would be much more powerful had Henry been torn between two loves; one, his familial love of his father, and the other, his sexual attraction to his lover. The film would be so much more compelling (and believable) if Senator Kray were to be basically a good man with extreme beliefs or if Henry were to be a true believer in his father's politics, who had to face how it conflicts with the reality of his own sexuality. Or what if Sen. Kray were a liberal whose politically correct rhetoric masks a homophobic mind? And though Anthony and his fellow activists aren't shown in a particularly flattering light either, the story overly stacks the deck to the left by making Senator Kray an oh-so obvious right-wing villain in a tired attempt to make clear the film's already obvious left-leaning bias. The result is weak propaganda and even weaker drama.

Worse, all the cheap political shots detract from the film's strongest relationship, between Newton's Henry and Jack Noseworthy's Anthony. Both actors give fine performances, helped considerably by the fact they are given the most realistic characters to play. Newton captures the anxiety of Henry, a guy who just wants to live his life out of the public eye, but finds the comfort that comes from living in the closet comes at a high price. Noseworthy makes credible a character who can't quite separate his sexuality from his politics, which, ironically, is the problem with the film itself. The film's most potent message would have been in exploring this love story rather than in focusing on all the yammering political noise that surrounds these two men.

This film seems to have come in for much criticism from the reviews on here, so I'm hoping to redress the balance here. As a film, it's OK, but compared to other gay indie films from America it sits near the top of the pile. The acting is generally good, the directing is competent. The script seems a little outdated for 2004, but I remember reading somewhere that there had been delays to the making of the film and so i wouldn't be surprised if the script was actually written in the late 1990s.

What makes this particularly interesting is that it is a far cry from other gay films out there. It isn't a love story, it doesn't try to woo in the punters by having stunningly handsome men who go full frontal or through strong sex scenes. That isn't what this is about. It has a message, though, and some of the scenes are a little clunky (especially the linking sections with the journalist), but that's a small price to pay for a good solid story that is well told.

The two young actors play the leads without making them into stereotypes and there isn't a screaming queen in sight. Thankfully. What makes the two protagonists most appealing is that neither of them are perfect human beings. The senator's son is cocky and arrogant at times, and the boy he meets has his own faults. The supporting cast is also very good, with some nicely drawn characters.

For a low budget gay effort, this is really good stuff.