Outing Riley

This film is about a young man having to come out to his 4 brothers, including a catholic priest, that he is gay.

I find "Outing Riley" a lot more entertaining than many gay films. For a start, it is made really professionally. It has got nice sets, good camera work and also people who can act! The most refreshing thing of all is that it has no campness, stereotypes or clichés that plagues a lot of these films. Much of the time, I thought I was watching a straight film. It's just like watching "American Pie" at times, for example having 4 guys drinking and goofing around, peeping at hot girls. If the character Andy was changed to a woman, then "Outing Riley" could well have been a typical Hollywood romantic or teenage sex comedy.

I have to give credit to Pete Jones, who wrote, directed and starred in this low-budget 2004 indie, for having the temerity to make a coming-out film when he is apparently straight. And therein lies the rub since Jones doesn't really lend an informed perspective to his protagonist's trying situation. He plays Bobby Riley, a Chicago advertising account executive who happens to be gay and happily partnered. He also happens to come from a traditional Irish-Catholic family, a sister who knows he's gay and three brothers who don't. The movie is primarily about Bobby's struggle to come out to his brothers now that their father has just passed away and the time has come for their annual fishing trip together. While one can envision how Bobby's admission would lead to liberation and tolerance, Jones also superficially belabors Bobby's angst to the aggravating point of making me indifferent to his fate.

A lot of the problem I had with the movie is the predictable and often forced humor Jones employs to ingratiate the character to the viewer. In what strikes me as film-making laziness, he goes as far as breaking the fourth wall, speaking to the camera, and using freeze-frames to either provide thumbnail sketches of the principal characters or comment on the action. The set-up with the brothers is also pretty generic as they represent variations on the beer-guzzling stereotypes one would expect from a movie at least forty years older. Two are married - Luke is a pothead with twin daughters, and Connor is a John Sununu look-alike who surfs the Web for porn. Oldest brother Jack is a Catholic priest, which sets him up for the most challenging road toward acceptance. Once the key revelation occurs, the inevitable ramifications at least allow for the film's few honest moments, the most effective being Luke's angry voicemail message in response to what he sees as Bobby's betrayal.

In his acting debut, the cherubic Jones makes little impression as the bedeviled Bobby. Nathan Fillion, who would later play the smitten doctor in the late Adrienne Shelly's "Waitress", fares the best among the actors portraying the brothers, and Michael McDonald of "MADtv" (not the singer) is surprisingly credible as Bobby's partner Andy. Julie Pearl is forced to play Bobby's sister Maggie as the nagging voice of conscience in order to facilitate the contrived plot conceit that proves disappointing toward the end. Jeff Garlin ("Curb Your Enthusiasm", "I Want to Someone to Eat Cheese With") shows up in a cameo as a blowhard agency honcho trying to recruit Bobby believing him to be straight. I appreciate how Jones does not wrap everything up nicely at the end, although he sadly uses a stereotypical fantasy swimming number to get his point across. The much-delayed 2007 DVD features a commentary track from Jones, interviews and deleted scenes.

As far as I know, from what I saw on Project Greenlight, Pete Jones isn't gay. So, I'm curious what motivated him to make this film, and to play the gay lead. It's not forbidden - and I'm always happy to see filmmakers portraying gays positively in their work - it just seems a little odd. And, in fact, that's one of the weaknesses of the film: Pete Jones doesn't really come across as gay. I'm not saying he should act effeminate or anything like that. It's just that that there was something not quite "on" about the scenes between his character and the character's boyfriend. At other times, I really got the impression that he'd watched "Jeffrey" a few too many times, and was trying to imitate it.

The other element that really didn't work for me was the voice-over and talking to the camera. It drew too much attention to itself, wasn't as funny as he seemed to think it was, and often didn't tell us anything we couldn't have learned from watching the characters interact.

Having said that, though, I think the film also has some excellent writing and strong performances, especially by Nathan Fillion. The best parts of the movie are when the brothers are trying to deal with Riley being gay. Jones is brilliant, when it comes to writing realistic - and very funny - dialog between characters he obviously relates to. This film, and his earlier film, "Stolen Summer", prove him to be a talented writer and director, and it turns out he's not half bad as an actor, either. I really hope he continues to make movies, and they get distribution.

I don't think there was a single gay person working on this film...and it showed. This is not a gay film, it is what a straight guy, who has probably never seen a gay film, thinks a gay film should be. Like Brokeback Mountain, which was made almost entirely by straight people, I never felt the sincerity of the gay thing. However, unlike Brokeback, this didn't have the story, the scenery or the strong acting to keep me entertained (even if I never fully believe that Jake and Heath were in love.) I knew nothing about this film, or writer/director/star Pete Jones, yet after watching it I was absolutely sure that he was straight and probably not all that familiar with gay people. As it turns out, he is straight and in one interview he admitted to very limited exposure to gay people. No surprise there. But I was further disappointed to read his kissing-a-boy-is-icky interview where he talks about how nervous he and everyone else was when they filmed the kiss in bed. He talks about it like it was so difficult and it was some big deal that they made it through the scene. Ugh. You didn't cure cancer...you touched lips with a guy. Stop acting like it was some huge achievement. All of these straight actors doing gay films need to take a lesson from Patrick Swayze who did some wonderful interviews after To Wong Foo and didn't turn into a giggling fifth grader when he talked about playing gay. Also Hilary Swank -- great interviews on playing queer. So, while this is not the worst film I've ever seen (not even the worst gay film) this film did nothing for me and I do not recommend the rental.

It's raw, powerful and hilarious. Director Pete Jones takes risks here- no compromises! He lets it ALL hang out! He draws upon deep personal stuff here from his youth. This is the type of material that you need to see to believe and then you still don't believe it so you have to see it again and again and again!