The feature The Big Gay Musical (1/8) represents all that I find excruciating about modern gay cinema. Not that there’s anything wrong with gay cinema, but, well, when films like this get front and center attention at a gay film festival, it just shows that if this is the best that the community can come up with an fawn over, well, I’d much rather be watching Die Hard again.
The Big Gay Musical is a musical (called “Adam and Steve”) within a movie. The musical is a riff on what if it wasn’t Adam and Eve, but instead… oh you know. So the musical and play bits are awkwardly inserted into the film as full numbers, making the momentum clunk along as the rest of the time we are subjected to the real lives of Paul (“Adam”) and Eddie (“Steve”), who are both very pretty, but have a wretchedly dull script to struggle through and even worse direction. Paul can’t maintain a relationship, so decides to be a slut, whereas Eddie is from a super-religious family, is virginal and naive, and has invited his parents to the show… and they don’t know he’s gay! Ooops! Do you think they’ll change their minds about their son by the end of a two-hour gay musical? Do you think Paul will eventually meet a nice guy and want to try dating? Do you think?
The Big Gay Musical boasts that almost everyone in the cast has been in Broadway musicals like “Wicked,” “Mamma Mia,” “Sunset Boulevard,” and “Hairspray”—you name it—so you have to wonder how such a group of people could come up with such a supremely dull and un-fun movie about the industry where the Gays roar and reign. I mean, really. Now I need to go watch Hedwig and the Angry Inch again to cleanse my palate….
In contrast to the overtly earnest, and thusly completely boring Big Gay Musical, there’s the Eating Out series of sex comedies. Would you judge me if these movies make me laugh? The latest sexcapade Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat (5/8) kills off the major characters from the second film, and simply starts fresh, with the only holdover being the outrageous fag-hag Tiffani (the screamingly funny Rebekah Kochan). This time a nerdy and refreshingly sunken-chested new-in-town guy named Casey crushes all over the volunteer organizer at the local gay non-profit. See? Political correctness along with raunchy comedy and hot boys! This series never pretends to be anything it isn’t (aka, extremely silly and as sexy as they can get away with), and the movies always surprise me by wearing their heart on their sleeves. See? The boys can be romantics, too!
