August 18, 2006
Another Gay Movie
NO STARS (out of four)
As anyone who spends enough time tuned to cable's Logo network can tell you, there are four kinds of "gay movies" — the coming-out story, the in-love-with-my-straight-roommate story, the gay-bashing story and the dying-of-AIDS story. Ninety percent of gay-targeted independent films fall into one of these four categories (even Brokeback Mountain conforms to the gay-bashing formula) — but not Another Gay Movie.
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Posted by Peter Debruge on August 18, 06 at 11:06 AM | Comments (0)
August 12, 2005
Pretty Persuasion
NO STARS (out of four)
What is it about high school that fascinates Hollywood so? We all survived it, didn't we? Still, it's positively alarming the number of filmmakers who still have an axe to grind with the popular kids who pushed 'em around back in high school. It's one thing to manufacture brainless high school comedies for teen audiences coping with all those funky hormone changes and new peer pressures they're experiencing. But it's quite a different story for angry old men to exact their revenge years after the fact through hardcore jock-hating, pretty-girl-bashing satires aimed at audiences who've long since graduated past such adolescent cheap shots. Get over it already.
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Posted by Peter Debruge on August 12, 05 at 11:11 AM | Comments (0)
August 05, 2005
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
NO STARS (out of four)
I can think of 100 reasons a desperate man might resort to a life of prostitution, but offering himself up as live bait for a serial killer definitely ain't one of 'em. So why would Deuce Bigalow go all the way to Amsterdam to reenlist as a male escort, especially when it means becoming a target in the Scooby-Doo-like mystery of the "man-whore killer"? (Could it be the same reason a studio might greenlight a sequel to a tasteless red-light comedy like Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo — because there's easy cash to be made in the process, even at the expense of good taste and propriety?)
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Posted by Peter Debruge on August 5, 05 at 10:54 AM | Comments (0)