With the introduction of online chat rooms and dating sites, hooking up for anonymous gay sex became easier than ever, and a new and exciting setting for stories about hot sex encounters between strangers was created. Hollywood got there quickly, with the internet providing the setting for romantic stories about encounters between lovers – like Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in the formulaic You’ve Got Mail – who don’t realize they know each other in real life. With its teasing “Are you ready to be hooked up?” tagline, Breaking the Cycle promises a sexy, indie glimpse in the world of anonymous online gay sex. Instead, director Dominick Brascia presents a rather predictable and unadventurous accidental love story of two gay roommates in New York City.
Straight-acting tough boy Jason (Carlos Da Silva) is addicted to cruising for hot sex online. Using the nick HookUpBoy, he has sex in a cinema, on the kitchen table, and on the phone. His roommate is the naïve and nerdy virgin Chad (the oddly named Ryan White) who secretly lusts after Jason. When Chad accidentally enters the chat room and encounters HookUpBoy, the romance begins. Here the meaning of the film’s title becomes clear: only romance can break the cycle of Jason’s addiction to anonymous sex. I don’t know what is worse: the bad acting, crappy scenario and cinematography, or the hypocrisy of exploiting the sensation of anonymous sex only to condemn it as an addiction that can be cured.
The movie’s most enjoyable moment is the soft-core sex scene in which Jason fucks Baseball Boy (Adam Cox) on the kitchen table. Starting with Baseball Boy’s announcement that he is “young, hung, and full of come!” the scene is like a bad parody of porn. Would you take someone seriously if they said that to you, even if it was true? Never have I seen such a clearly fake and laughable sex scene. The actors look more like two straight frat boys jokingly imitating gay sex, then as two men actually having sex. The DVD bonus feature entitled “straight actors playing gay” provides the answer: both Da Silva and Cox are straight men in real life and had a hard (or flaccid?) time playing the gay sex scene. Well, it shows. I am not suggesting that gay men can only be portrayed by gay actors (many actors in gay porn are actually straight, yet are still able to give a convincing performance, and many a straight actor has convincingly played gay on the silver screen), but the inclusion of only these two straight actors in the cast interviews suggests that the film’s producers consider their straightness as an extra bonus to excite gay viewers. But why a gay-oriented film about ostensibly gay lovers using gay chat rooms has to be played by two young straight actors who freak at the story’s content doesn’t make any sense, and the sex scene that results is completely lame.
Breaking the Cycle is produced and distributed by a company called 10% (referring to the convenient but incorrect assumption that 1 out of 10 people is gay), which claims on its website to be “serving the community” by producing gay greeting cards, calendars, posters, perfume, underwear, and films. How any community is served by the production of posters and calendars is anyone’s guess, but to serve us even better, a commercial for 10% perfume, featuring a hot and semi-nude guy, is added as “bonus” on the DVD edition. Even worse, the action in the film is interrupted when Chad picks up Jason’s 10% perfume bottle to inform us that it really smells nice. Talk about product placement!
No film needs to serve any community, but this film really is a disservice, ripping off the “community” both financially and ideologically. So do yourself and your community a favor and don’t waste your money on this crap.
Review by Jaap Kooijman
