Week-end prolongé

I generally liked this movie. A friend I was watching it with said that he did not, and that it was just full of cliché's. Well - he was right; but sometimes, cliché's are comfortable. With low budget indipendant gay films, I don't go in expecting much other than some nudity and cute guys. This movie delivered that, but also a nice story without the usual happy ending.

Sure - there were some scenes where the dialog was a bit stilted; but I kind of found that charming as well. I found this a nice way to spend an hour and a half during the evening, curled up on the couch in my pajamas.

I was surprised by film. Generally, I only see gay low-budget indie film as show of solidarity for the rest of the community. Often, I'll have to turn it off after ten or fifteen minutes. This was clearly not "Citizen Kane," but it wasn't half-bad either.

The performances were kind of a mixed bag. There were a few that I felt were pretty strong, and a few that were weak. At least two of the actors started in one category and ended in the other. Some of the scenes with the actors paired off worked really well, and were probably the main reason the film works.

The technical detail of the film are generally great. Even though clearly shot on DV, it avoids looking washed-out at all times. The camera is fairly locked down, but that's appropriate, given the material.

The biggest flaw, as has been mentioned, is the script. There are far too many instances where a line or exchange just lands with a THUD, and the scenes that work are despite the material, not because of it.

Still, it's better than a lot of low-budget gay cinema.

I don't know how so many gay people make the arts wonderful, and then produce this kind of painfully bad drivel! HORRIBLE ACTING. . .smarmy and arrogant characters. EDITING? You could have cut about an hour off of this movie just by cutting out all the dead space. Andy why did everybody talk. . . So. .very. . .slowly? It would have been better as a porn. Otherwise, absolutely NO reason to watch. And then the writers try to make it deep and meaningful by bringing up important social subjects, and then.burying them under self-absorbed, heavy handed dialogue. At one point one character says to another, "I never heard you speak so passionately about this subject before." Really? Turtles race more passionately. To be fair, I didn't even watch the whole thing, as my cliche limit had been reached by about fifteen minutes. Maybe the worst gay themed film I have ever seen, and there have been some bad ones!

By the end of this film I was so bored that I was looking at Christmas presents for my sisters cat on eBay.

Some of the cast were quite nice to look at, but I'm not sure if any of them can really act? Maybe there were a couple of bad ones that brought the others performance down with them, but they didn't engage me and I found the story lacking in any passion or excitement. Even the full frontal nudity was not enough to stop me putting this back on eBay! Also, what was up with calling the guy old all the way through, he was probably 5 years older than the majority of the rest at most! Not to mention the lines they ripped off from other films. It only scores so high, because Cameron has a great backside.

Obviously, I didn't expect this to be a masterpiece and the low budget of a production even if it's quite visible never comes in the way when I form an opinion about any movie. This said, even though I was able to finish the whole thing in one sitting (quite rare for me) due to the short duration, I can't say I really enjoyed it much.

First, the story is quite ordinary, nothing much happens and the dialogue is not exactly scintillating. Still, that can be true for many other movies made with few resources so I don't hold that against the film. The biggest flaw in my opinion is the acting.

Except maybe for Chris Carlisle as the self-proclaimed geek Mac, Derek Meeker as Simon and Stephen Twardokus as Ace, none of the other actors felt even remotely comfortable in their roles. Their acting was amateurish to say the least and I could even sense their embarrassment trying to pull it off.

I also have to say that I would have switched a few of the roles around since several of them felt miscast but the one who really didn't fit his role was Daniel Rhyder as Andre the escort. Not to sound disrespectful but he is one of the least attractive man in the bunch and it was unbelievable to expect the viewers to imagine anyone paying his services, least of all the attractive Derek Meeker. In real life it would have been the other way around.

I'm not saying this film is completely awful but it's very generic and bland so a 4 star rating felt appropriate. If the story had a bit more meat to it (no pun intended) in terms of real drama it would have been better to entice us as viewers. But except for a few flashes of real profundity about aging in the gay culture, it remained lightweight fluff. In closing, I also have to mention that the soft erotica and nudity didn't add much of anything to the production.