Oy Vey! My Son Is Gay!!

OY VEY MY SON IS GAY recently had its world premier at the Montreal International Film Festival, opening to a little too enthusiastic audience. It is nothing more than a schmaltzy stereotypical Hollywood film about a New York Jewish family trying to accept their son who just came out of the closet.

Despite the lineup of famous names including Lanie Kazan, Vincent Pastore (Pussy from The Sopranos) and Carmen Electra (of Baywatch fame), OY VEY was badly acted and edited with a weak story line incorporating every ethnic cliché in the book and making this movie very painful to watch. And with its cast of shallow characters, this film fails to deliver any real message.

OY VEY opens up with a cartoon sketch introducing the characters and would have made a really cute film as an animation. It would have also been better suited for television and really should have been made into a play first in order to be adapted for the big screen.

OY VEY MY SON IS GAY was written, directed and produced by Evgeny Efineevsky, who has a few films under his belt from Israel, yet it seems like it could have been made by any film student.

This is a very poorly made film, one that is filled with all the Gay, Jewish and Italian stereotypes you can imagine. The acting is poor, with the actors delivering their lines like they are reading them from a teleprompter. There is no chemistry between the two actors portraying the gay son and his partner so that becomes unbelievable. Low budget doesn't always have to mean a poor production but it certainly does in this case! Just not worth watching at all.

I saw Oy Vey My Son Is Gay last week when I was visiting a friend in NYC. They were doing a screening of the film for amfAR.

After the cartoon intro, the actual film started off odd and very choppy. It was almost uncomfortable to even watch. As the film progressed, I had high hopes for the movie. A good cast and with so much going on in the gay community, a good chance to really talk about relevant subject matters through comedy.

I was disappointed on all levels. The film was simply embarrassing to watch. Instead of focusing on relevant subject matter it perpetuated obvious stereotypes of the GLBT community. I'm a proud parent of a gay child and I was offended that this was the best that they could come up with.

I'd highly recommend seeing something else. It was waste of an hour of my time. No good messages to walk away with. I doubt it will ever make it into a theater.

I caught this film at the Montreal Film Festival and absolutely loved the film. The writers did a great job of blending serious subject matters with humor seamlessly.

The film's cast couldn't have been chosen more perfectly. Lainie Kazan and Saul Rubinek were really great together.

The film made me laugh at times and cry at others. If you can imagine blending My Big Fat Greek Wedding with Mambo Italiano, you have Oy Vey...

The music to the film was great as well.

All around a good film.

This had so much potential for being a moderately humorous, somewhat heart-warming movie. Even if it used recycled subplots from other ethnic comedies about families coming to terms with a son who announces he's gay and a son coping with their response to the news, with this cast, it could have at least achieved mediocrity. Mediocrity remained only an unrealized dream

I kept watching this with the hope that the cast would eventually come to the rescue, given the apparent absence of both a director and script, but about half-way through the movie I admitted defeat, cut my losses and hit the stop button.

There is nothing to like here and it is amazing to think this disaster was produced in the 21st century. Lainie Kazan seemed to struggle with the whole concept of being the stereotypical Jewish mother. When she repeatedly spat out "shiksa" or "mazel tov" she sounded like a southern Baptist speaking a foreign language and her self-absorbed inability to hear anything her son or husband said wasn't cute & comical. It was ham- fisted, poorly timed and sophomoric.

I actually felt sorry for Saul Rubinek. He sometimes had a glazed look as if he was aboard a sinking ship with no more lifeboats. His occasional displays of despair were probably less motivated by his character's son coming out than by the realization that he had signed onto this disastrous production.

If you have fond memories of the Bates Motel in Psycho, I think they used some of those old sets in this movie. The greatest expense in producing this film must have been for plywood.