Humpday

This film is about two guy friends who have to deal with their drunken pledge to make a porn movie with each other.

I think "Humpday" is wrongly marketed as a comedy, which makes viewers expect things which are not in the film. The first half is far too slow to be a comedy, and the second half is far too heavy on words. The pacing and the tone are just not right to be a comedy. It might be entertaining to see two guys trying to work their way out of the awkward situation without having to sacrifice their reputation, but there is simply not enough material to fill 90 minutes. The film stretches for far too long, and it gets quite boring. I think it would have been better marketed as an indie drama.

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.

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.

I came here after watching it yesterday to write a review of Humpday, but when I found a few excellent reviews already here I changed my mind. Now I've changed my mind again. Although existing reviews express many of my problems with this movie, they do not adequately cover the most important issue.

Although reviewers who liked this movie have correctly noted that it is not about being gay--not even about "going" gay--this movie does present a vivid and disturbing picture of most straight men's attitude toward male homosexuality. To them, sex between two men is deeply repugnant, grossly unnatural and disgusting. The prospect of themselves touching another man sexually is so disturbing that they pee in their pants and act like terrified babies. Is that funny? Not to me. Is seeing it enacted brilliantly on screen enlightening and liberating? Not to me. I've seen it all my life.

I'm going to assume (because it's almost surely true) that the vast majority of Humpday's ardent fans are women, both straight and lesbian, and probably some straight men who consider themselves liberated and enlightened enough to laugh at the foibles of their less enlightened brothers or even at themselves in their own pre-liberation pasts. I suppose I have to allow also for a few self-loathing gay men, because I know they're out there. I'm going to address this review to those women and straight men; the self-loathing gays I'll pray for.

The fact that at least one of the men in Humpday is himself relatively enlightened does not make the movie's offenses any less offensive; it makes them worse, because it also shows how shallow and unreliable that enlightenment actually is. Those straight men who under ideal conditions are wonderfully tolerant of male homosexuality run away in disgust if it gets too close to them personally. It's not unlike the old liberal hypocrisy of advocating racial integration as long as they don't try to move in next door or marry our daughter.

It's never wrong to expose hypocrisy or shallow virtue. It's never wrong to shine the light of truth into the dark, nasty recesses of fear and hatred in all our lives. Humpday does that brilliantly. For the billions of men who are like the two in this move, watching it could be a blessing of incalculable value. And I would never want to deprive the long-suffering and universally abused female majority of any opportunity to see how fundamentally flawed and foolish men can be. I just don't enjoy watching it myself, and here's why:

I am a gay man. Having sex with another man is as natural and healthy to me as breathing. The prospect of sex with a woman is as unnatural and repugnant to me as sex with each other is to the guys in Humpday. But I would never want a woman to have to sit through a movie that shows her brutally and graphically how very disgusting she is to me sexually. However well-adjusted she may be, being told that she disgusts me could hurt her, unnecessarily, and I wouldn't want to do that.

That's exactly how Humpday makes me feel. It reminds me that the world is full of very powerful and likable men who find me disgusting, who would rather die than have to be like me or even risk seeming to be like me, and who would rather have ME die than get too close to them. What I AM disgusts and repels them.

It doesn't matter that the movie is not advocating that attitude. By simply reminding me how prevalent that attitude is, it digs into old wounds and causes me pain that does not add anything good to me.

I don't NEED to be reminded how much straight men despise me underneath whatever civilized veneer they may have put on, any more than African Americans need to be reminded how most in the white majority REALLY feel about them inside. It's painful, and although it IS important information, I'm not one of the ones who needs to see it.

So I appreciate Humpday's artistic excellence. It is one of the most powerful and well-realized movies I've ever seen. But it's not for me or for anyone like me, any more than a beautifully executed movie about rape would entertain or enlighten a victim of rape.

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.