[Movies] Another Gay Movie (2006)

It's kind of sad how quickly the LGBT movie segment hit bottom in terms of scraping bad straight movies for ideas. In this case, we got a movie that was an odd comedic satire of similar comedies in the tone of American Pie and There's Something About Mary. And while those movies certainly have their markets, I could never really wrap my head around them. And this movie tried to give a gay spin to that same concept, which ended up being even weirder.

Another Gay Movie is a movie that I honestly hoped would be decently funny, but the end result wasn't quite there. Then again, maybe I just set too high a bar for this movie. Or maybe I just set a different bar for comedies in general.

And don't get started with me about not understanding the comedic tone of this movie or something. I understand camp and love movies that can pull of that kind of kitsch effectively. But this movie is not example of that kind of campiness handled well.


Synopsis: Another Gay Movie is a 2006 LGBT comedy movie written, produced and directed by Todd Stephens as distributed by TLA Releasing.

The movie follows four gay friends who have recently graduated from San Torum High School. The four are determined to lose their "anal virginity" before the big Labor Day party. And thus each of them set out their respective paths to try and have sex before the agreed upon deadline. Naturally their respective plots don't exactly go well and a lot of the comedy of this movie is based around their individual adventures.

First there's Andy (Michael Carbonaro), who is your typical awkward teen whose primary interest is wanking off with the aid of various fruits and vegetables. Then there's Jarod (Jonathan Chase), the buff jock character who of course needs to be insecure despite his looks. There's Griff (Mitch Morris), the nerdy guy who is is in love with his best friend. And there's Nico (Jonah Blechman), who is the fabulously flamboyant member of the group who is as stereotypical as you can get.

As a satirical comedy, I can understand the need for the movie to borrow concepts from popular comedies (gay or otherwise). That's how satires are supposed to work. However there's a rather fine line between good satire and a cheap knock-off, and this is where this movie struggles. Instead of being a somewhat witty attempt to poke fun at various LGBT comedy movies and their stereotypes, it instead embraces everything it hopes to satire and becomes a full part of the ridiculous demographic.

The core plot is a raunchier clone of the plot of American Pie, down to Andy's need to vent his sexual frustrations on food products and repeatedly getting caught by his parents. From the opening scene with practically everyone needing to walk in on Andy, it sort of sets the tone for the rest of the movie. Thus it's the same low-brow humor that has become rather popular in recent years but hyper-sexualized - I guess for the equally stereotypical notion that the LGBT community's sense of humor is grounded in sex-related jokes. Thus this is as much a satire as the Scary Movie franchise and it's related genre-specific spin-offs.

The movie just keeps hurling cheap joke after cheap joke in an effort to hopefully catch something that might make the audience laugh. Beyond the sexual jokes, they decide to take further advantage of other sources of low-brow humor including racial stereotypes and Richard Hatch. And man, that was a really bad scene indeed. CANNOT UNSEE.

I really think the movie could have done a lot more with its premise. There are better, wittier, snarkier ways of making fun of the tropes of other movies. Simply repeating them in a weird hodgepodge mash-up while turning the crass sexual humor dial on HIGH isn't the way to do it. And thus the ridiculousness of the movie never really drew me in.

Another Gay Movie certainly lives up to its title - it is really just another cheap gay comedy that contributes nothing new to the genre. I don't need Shakespeare, but I do need something that won't cause me to drop a few IQ points. And so it can only rate 1.5 sexual situations that are awkward for all the wrong reasons out of a possible 5.