All Over The Guy is an utterly wretched film that carves deep new trenches into the stinking open grave that is contemporary gay cinema. It is eminently condemnable, as apart from generally passable performances – and a split second cameo from the talented Lisa Kudrow – every element of the film scores dead zero. Over-excited about what they mistakenly felt was a high-concept gay-film project that would carry itself with wit and innovation, the film makers have skipped basic film making fundamentals.
Eli (Dan Bucatinsky – also the screenwriter and the producer so the main person to blame, I guess) is a wordy, plain looking guy who’s best friends with Brett (Adam Goldberg) who’s straight, but who everyone thinks is gay. Tom (Richard Ruccolo) is the hard-drinking hunk that’s best friends with brassy LA-chick Jackie (Sasha Alexander). Jackie and Brett meet accidentally, fall in love, and introduce their gay best friends. But Eli and Tom get off to a rough start – Tom drinks too much, and doesn’t respond to Eli’s romantic advances. For some reason, however, Eli thinks Tom is “the one” and won’t leave him alone, sniping at him for being unresponsive, and even stalking him, breaking into his apartment and subsequently spending the night in jail. All the while, we get many flashbacks to Eli and Tom’s childhood, where we learn that their every character trait has been grafted onto them by their freaky and/or bad parents. Alcoholic Tom’s parents were heavy drinkers, you see, while Eli’s loopy Mom filled him up with romantic and sexual neuroses.
The film’s shooting script must have been what’s called a slush draft, a get-it-all-down hotch-potch of nascent ideas that can be shaped into something meaningful during later drafts. The creators of All Over The Guy must have been in a rush. Vague themes bump aimlessly into retarded plot ideas and the indistinct characters bleeds into each other until the film starts to resemble some kind of low-rent, gay, The Boys From Brazil.
Thematically, the All Over The Guy's love me/laugh at me/blame my parents West Hollywood high jinx is dated and dumb, and more suitable to a TV sit-com, where it’s been done to death already anyway. Technical details like make up and lighting are botched, leaving the leading man’s face looking unnaturally (but hilariously) orange in the film’s final scenes. The film is even poorly marketed, with a fistful of conflicting taglines (“what happens when you’re looking for Mr Right and end up with Mr Right Now?”, “4 friends, 2 couples … twice as much to lie about in the morning” and “What happens when the one doesn’t know he’s the one?”) that describe completely separate stories/movies, have nothing really to do with the content of this film and which confuse you before the movie even starts.
Perplexing
But what is most perplexing about this bizarre film is its totally incongruous claim of being “non-gay”. The film’s official production notes state: “All Over The Guy cannot simply be called a 'Gay Movie.' By telling a stereotype-free story about people connecting, the characters' sexuality becomes refreshingly besides-the-point.”
The cast and crew concur (my italics):
Screenwriter/producer/star Dan Bucatinsky: "Over the last ten or fifteen years, 'gay films' were all about coming out to your family, suicide attempts or AIDS. That's all been covered. Then I thought that the most radical thing left to do is to just tell a love story that's completely universal … but just happens to be about gay men."
Director Julie Davis: "It's just a wonderful story that deals with human foibles and intimacy … sexuality never figures into it. And that's never been done before."
Executive producer Don Roos: "The movie is completely free of all stereotypes … if you're a straight audience, you may only realize later that you've watched all of this happen between two gay men. And that is truly an exciting and radical development."
Actor Richard Ruccolo: “It’s not about stereotypes, not about disease, not about any of that, but just about a relationship. And it was interesting to see a crossover film that was about a gay couple with nothing that you usually see that tells us this character is gay”
Actor Adam Goldberg: “It’s not about the gayness of the relationship. It’s just about the relationship … it’s interesting and surprising that in the past, gay relationships haven’t been depicted in a less didactic way”
Now, these passionate statements come from the people who made a film that contains dialogue like this:
- Brett: Buttercup. I'm not gay, okay? Just because I say buttercup, doesn't mean that I'm gay. I have this argument with Eli all the time. Goddamned, just because I say buttercup that doesn't mean that I'm gay, you know. Used to be gay. Wanna be gay. I'm not gay…
- Jackie: Ah, who's Eli? Your boyfriend?
- Brett: Right, no, he's my best friend who happens to be gay.
- Jackie: Look, I know gay men. I practically invented them. And there's no such thing as a straight guy with a gay best friend who's not fucking.
(Note the spin-doctored-Kinsey-Report word count here, with nine out of ninety – or one in ten – of the words in this exchange being “gay”)
key scenes that involve:
- Two gay guys on a date discussing the film In & Out
- The main character bursting into an AIDS clinic and loudly announcing to the receptionist that he always ends his relationships with a HIV test
- Gay sex featuring an arty, eccentric and over-emotional bottom underneath a “straight acting” all-business top
- This same love scene ending with the emotionally cold top leaving in a hurry the next morning, with the love-struck bottom wanting more, and becoming romantically fixated on his fucker
and a group of central characters comprised of:
- A gay gossip columnist with a controlling mother
- A gay alcoholic with a self-destructive streak and a distant father
- A fag-hag best friend who works in a creative field
- A cuddly straight guy who’s totally cool with gays
- A “camp” old woman who works in an AIDS clinic and dispenses relationship advice to gay guys
- A baby dyke who loves her gay brother
A fat-clogged artery
In short, it couldn’t be more brainlessly “gay” if it tried, yet that’s precisely what its cast and crew claim to have strived to avoid. How could any audience member with eyes and ears get to the end of this film and, as exec. producer Don Roos claimed, only work out later, on reflection, that the central couple were gay? What film is Richard Ruccolo talking about when he refers to the absence of any normal gay indicators? It couldn’t possibly be this one, which, despite the director’s claim to the contrary, is so saturated with mainstream homosexuality and unimaginative gay musings that it is throttled by them, much like a fat-clogged artery.
And sorry, Dan Bucatinsky, but if you think that the handful of relevant films released in the past ten or fifteen years have left ideas like the AIDS epidemic and gay youth suicide “covered”, then those issues must be far less complicated and pertinent than I think they are.
Maybe next time (though we might hope there may not be one) the film makers can quickly review the history of gay cinema, and discover that numerous films have dealt with homosexuality matter-of-factly, and completely un-self-consciously, and have been doing so for decades. (The list includes Fox and His Friends (1976), Prick Up Your Ears (1986), and even contemporary award winners like Gods and Monsters (1998) Billy Elliot (2000) The Deep End (2001) and many others.) There are other movies that have grappled with some of the thornier and less-pleasant realities of gay life and presented non-cliched gay characters, and these too have been getting made since at least the sixties. (This list includes The Killing of Sister George (1968), Sunday, Bloody Sunday (1976), The 4th Man (1982), Parting Glances (1986), Savage Nights (1992) and so on.) Even some of All Over The Guy’s glossy contemporaries have taken new if not especially daring turns with their gay characters and subject matters (Relax … It’s Just Sex and Trick, for example).
It’s telling – and terrifying - that Bucatinsky et al and their film’s frames of reference seem to be limited to present-day West Hollywood guppie life, and an exclusive and audience-specific media subset that includes “Will And Grace” and post-AIDS gay romantic comedies. Maybe people that know so little about gay-film history and the real diversity of gay experiences shouldn’t be making films at all, let alone ones about being gay?
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