tlashop.com

Review

A deliciously subversive breakthrough in gay filmmaking! Never before has one character (and a teenage girl at that) wrecked more havoc on the previously tranquil lives of a group of gay men than in this hilariously mean-spirited comedy. Dedee (Christina Ricci) is a 16-year-old bad-to-the-bone white-trash gal eager to sow her wild oats. She leaves her Louisiana life for an extended visit to her gay half-brother Bill (Martin Donovan), a placid and altogether nice guy living with his dumb-as-a-doornail but quite sexy younger boyfriend Matt (Ivan Sergei). And before she has a chance to unpack her bags, she’s seduced Matt and has convinced him to go off together. And there begins the action in this razor-sharp satire that skewers the filmic conventions of a bad girl who really wants to do good as well as offering a decidedly different view of gay men. For instead of portraying gay men as witty conversationalists, sex-obsessed or sexually confused, we see instead gay men who are conventional, domesticated, cute but a little on the stupid side (like your beloved dog) and even insensitive and duplicitous (Johnny Galecki as high schooler Jason, who falsely accuses his former teacher of sexually abusing him). Why, even though there are several gay men in the story, they don’t even propel the action but simply react to the calumnious actions of Dedee. Anyone numbed by predictable gay love stories or sensitive coming-out tales should thoroughly enjoy this wicked comedy.