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 Adam & Steve Adam (Craig Chester) and Steve (Malcolm Gets) meet at New York's Danceteria disco in 1987, when Adam is an uptight punk/Goth and Steve a coked-up big haired go-go dancer. Steve gives Adam his first line of coke, and after they watch the sun come up from the Brooklyn Bridge, the pair head back to Adam's place for some hot drug-sex. Temperatures are rising until Steve, after one line too many, gets an attack of diarrhea and squirts a brown river all over Adam's carpet, and Adam gets nauseous and projectile vomits across the room. Mortified, Steve flees and the pair don't see each other again until seventeen years later, when Adam, single and jaded and in a 12-step program after an alcohol and crack addiction, takes his wounded dog to the hospital, where slutty but sober Steve is working as a psychologist. The pair start dating, fall in love, but only later realize that they've met each, in such embarrassing circumstances, before. Surprisingly, there are some merits in this latest dropping from the despicable Zany Gay Romantic Comedy factory. I really liked the head on approach the film takes to some of the subjects gay culture holds as taboo, such as how to deal with the shit factor and the lengths we go to to pretend it isn't there. At one point, Steve admits he wishes people just assumed he never went to the toilet at all, or that a magic angel could just fly in and take care of his solid waste leaving his arse a clean and spotless sex hole with no potential for embarrassing odours or leakage. The transition from the Eighties to the near-present is cleverly done, with an older Adam sitting in a gay disco with the same song playing, losers grooving away and doing bumps of crystal and K rather than coke. The pharmaceuticals might come in and out of vogue, but nothing else changes. The strange phenomenon of big-name actresses chewing scenery in low-budget gay films pays dividends here, with Parker Posey amusing as Adam's fag hag Rhonda, Sally Kirkland performing a boisterous cameo as a bi-polar ex-crack whore who now runs recovery classes, and the legendary Julie Hagerty doing her usual great stuff as Adam's accident-prone mother. There are far worse entries in this genre than Adam & Steve, but the genre itself is so crap that Adam & Steve, judged as is, can't really be praised too extensively. Typical of its type, Adam & Steve is an overlong Will and Grace style pilot episode interweaved with some sort of Bollywood/Doris Day era musical comedy hybrid where ludicrous plot contrivances jostle for screen time with totally out-of-the-blue song and dance numbers performed straight to the camera, overdone moments of slapstick physical comedy and all number of zany vignettes that seem to have some kind of narrative purpose but which are so trite and clumsily handled the only reaction they provoke is a cringe. Supporting characters are not permitted a third dimension, with both sets of parents exaggerated eccentrics and "homophobic" neighbours who apparently have little to do but shout "fags" and throw fruit at Adam & Steve every time they see them. There is the odd funny line here and there, but in general the dialogue is either bald exposition with characters telling other characters (and the audience) who and what they are and what they're doing thinking and feeling, or laboured non-sequitirs thrown in to explain completely stupid moments such as an extra running into the frame and shooting a duck while Adam is conducting an ornithological class in Central Park. That, or endless coffee-clutch scenes with Adam worrying that he's not good enough for Steve and Rhonda consoling him that her love life is in the can as well. Her plot thread, which sees her pursuing a relationship with Steve's roommate plays twenty-eighth fiddle to the boys' affair and doesn't even begin until about two-thirds into the film, so I don't know why the back of my DVD copy says that the film is about a gay couple and their "wisecracking best friends" who also pair off. All Rhonda and Michael (Chris Kattan), Steve's roommate, have to do is feed information to the two leads and turn them this direction and that with various revelations of indiscretions and secrets. Director/star Chester seems to have plenty of ideas, and as mentioned, I really liked some of the ones he's included in this movie. If we're going to have lightweight but sanctimonious gay comedies by the dozen every year, then one that pokes some thoughtful fun at itself is most welcome. So why sour it by falling back every five minutes into whining about gay marriage, anti-gay verbal abuse, conservative parents and the neurotic pitfalls of late-thirties gay singletons trying to make a go of it with each other? They're dour topics and there's nothing to do with them but aimlessly spin scenes out of shopworn wisecracks, and listening to anyone, or any film, try over and again to squeeze seven minutes of laughs out of a not-so-funny joke is just embarrassing for everyone. Related Reading:
 Outrate.net: Homosexuality and Movies ... Re-Viewed |
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