Humpday

What a disappointment. This film started off promisingly, with a very funny premise that is established in a semi-believable way. Sadly, that is really all there is to the film. The funny premise leads nowhere, it is just milked and milked and milked until the audience is no longer laughing, but rather just waiting for it to end. Believability also starts going out the window about halfway through the film, with characters acting and reacting in ways that no human would, but are required contrivances to keep the story rolling along.

I too was not a fan of the overall aesthetic of the film, a sort of forced naturalism, with almost exclusively hand-held camera work, awkward quick focus and zoom changes, and an improvised feel to the dialog. I felt this sharply contrasted with the highly contrived nature of much of the script, and I also feel that it is generally unpleasant anyway.

Surprisingly good. The central plot was so bizarre and risque that I thought it shouldn't work, and would just come out as pretentious. In the end it does work, mostly, because of the wordplay, humour and natural feel to all the relationships and dialogue. The whole movie had this great home movie-type feel.

Great acting all round, especially by the two male leads, Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard. Apparently a lot of the dialogue was ad-libbed, contributing to the "real" feel.

I know of a situation very similar to the one presented in the film. This two guys challenge the other about having sex with each other without changing their own perceptions about who they were. It became a big joke because although they got very near, apparently, never ever happened. Funnily enough they both had, separately, an homosexual experience with a stranger. It is absurd to think that two human beings could not make love if there is a minimum of attraction, physical, intellectual, emotional. We have been brain washed about this factor. Homosexuals have no fear, not really, about straight sex but heterosexuals have an irrational fear of gay sex because, I believe, they are terrified of the fact they may like it or feel comfortable with it and then a flood of insecurities will follow. Under that umbrella "Humpday" gets it absolutely right. They don't get to it because of fear of themselves, plain and simple. But the whole thing could have been told in 30 minutes. Improvisations are fun if one has the sense to administrate and cut. Edit, edit and edit leaving the surprises alive and "Humpday" spends an inordinate amount of time saying the same things. However I had fun and the three leads are terrific.

There was a lot of promise here, but ultimately the film is a huge cop out, which perhaps is the point. In this case an opportunity to perhaps delve a bit deeper into male friendship and men's more tender feelings for each other was squandered. Nothing lost, nothing gained.

If a man had written and directed this film, it would have had a different ending. With that said, Lynn Shelton takes us on a feminist ride--after all, two women having sex on film is sometimes considered "art," so why not explore that angle with men? In the final seconds of the film when Andrew stops laughing while looking at what was recorded, I was left with this sense of his longing--for completion of something (as he said), for something more intimate with his good friend, for being part of something greater than himself--all things Ben already had. And even though the idea was booze- and drug-induced, it was Andrew who came up with it to start. Sooo...something else is going on in Andrew's mind, heart and soul. At the end of the day, I ask "Do I care about these characters?" The only one I really cared for was Anna--she had the most to lose and gain from Ben and Andrew's really implausible scheme. Acting okay...Alycia Delmore really stood out, especially in the two scenes when the truths come out.