Gay Movie Just Another Disappointment

If nothing else, Todd Stephens’ (“Gypsy 83”) “Another Gay Movie” is sure to be a hit with gay audiences craving something different (and more than a bit immature). This raunchy over the top unrated gross-out teen sex comedy has everything going on inside its serpentine coils including the kitchen sink, no turn untaken or corner left undiscovered as every sacred cow out there is sacrificed in pursuit of a laugh.

Granted, a broad farcical satire of “American Pie” and its entire ilk with a homosexual twist isn’t exactly everyone’s cup of tea. It’s one thing to put your own unique comedic spin on a tired old genre that made luminaries like John Hughes and Amy Heckerling stars, quite another to beat said genre over the head with a sledgehammer the size of the state of California. There is nothing subtle about “Another Gay Movie,” not one single solitary thing, and as hard as I laughed I couldn’t help but feel like large portions of this were beating a dead horse over and over again with a very large pogo stick.

The basic premise is remarkably familiar. Four gay childhood friends; Andy (Michael Carbonaro), Jarod (Jonathan Chase), Nico (Jonah Blechman) and Griff (Mitch Morris); make a pact to lose their virginity before the end of their senior year of high school. Misadventure after misadventure compounds their quest, until by the end they discover getting laid isn’t the last remaining frontier in life and the most important thing is to remain true to who they really are. And, of course, there’s plenty of nudity, sex, flatulence and rather messy quiches to keep them, and the audience, guessing.

Stephens, working from a story he co-wrote with Tim Kaltenecker, makes sure to leave no stone unturned as he demolishes every queer stereotype and heterosexual taboo imaginable in an onslaught of comic trickery the likes of which would make Jim Belushi, Jason Biggs and all their toga and pie-loving mates cheer. After writing one of the seminal pieces of queer cinema in the last ten years with “Edge of Seventeen,” the writer-director literally bites the hand that feeds him even going so far to turn that film’s most heartfelt and poignant scene into a rollicking joke worthy of classic “Saturday Night Live.”

Unfortunately, as funny and observantly wicked as some of the humor is; you can’t tell me it’s not an absolute hoot to see current jailbird Richard Hatch nakedly poking fun at his own omnipotent Machiavellian persona; this film is about as subtle as a slap to the face. Stephens urges his actors to emote and act with all the delicacy of a church pipe organ, and even though I laughed after a while it was impossible not to find this hyperbolic excess tiresome.

It is unfortunate the fact the filmmaker felt he needed to make a picture like this one. I saw Stephens’ directorial debut “Gypsy 83” a couple of years before it finally found a distributor and made some rounds inside a few obscure theaters here and there. What happened to that magnificent coming of age musical road movie is just sickening, the film a sad example of a glorious independently made marvel relegated with virtually zero fanfare to the overlooked dustbin of your local video store.

I can’t help but feel like “Another Gay Movie” is an obvious plea for acceptance (and dollars) from a (mostly) queer audience that deserted him his last time out. And it’s an easy sell, one so sure of itself and its pull on its built in audience it doesn’t even try to go out of its way to give them something more profound than a continuous buffet of buffoonery. The actors do what they can, and cameos from the likes of Hatch, former Kid in the Hall Scott Thompson and famed female impersonator Mink Stole certainly help, just not to the extent they could have.

Don’t get me wrong, Stephens has made sure to give his picture plenty of balls (literal ones), the male sexual nudity so omnipresent it’s no wonder this thing hits theaters without a MPAA rating. I also like that the film treats growing up gay as just another one of those things, a normal part of that complex mechanism we call humanity teenagers attend high school to learn how to navigate. I just think the filmmaker can do better, and as funny as this is “Another Gay Movie” is still just another summer disappointment.