[Movies] The 10 Year Plan (2014)

So I had rather enjoyed the movie Is It Just Me? back in the day and I was interested to see what would come next for the team behind it. There were some social media interactions here and there and in time but then life got busy and I lost track what else the folks had planned.

Fast-forward to today and I came across The 10 Year Plan, which I sort of remembered from social media posts here and there some time back. It had been added to the Netflix library somewhat recently and on a slow night I figured that I might as well check it out since I hadn't watched any distinctly LGBT movies as of late.

This one was a weird one and now that I look at online reviews after the fact, it's a bit of a wonder that the movie has such a wide distribution. It's definitely not the best example of what we would hope for from a gay comedy but it does hurt to consider that the movie wasn't better than it was.


Synopsis: The 10 Year Plan is an LGBT comedy written and directed by J.C. Calciano. The movie premiered at Outfest 2014 and a few other film festivals.

So Myles (Jack Turner) is a diehard romantic, but he takes his desire to become the perfect homemaker a bit too far, thus driving away a lot of prospective boyfriends. In contrast his best friend Brody (Michael Adam Hamilton) is a rather promiscuous gay cop who is anything but romantic. After another boyfriend leaves Myles, he ends up asking Brody to get into some silly contact to become a couple if they're still single 10 yeas.

Nearly 10 years later, Myles is on the brink of driving away another boyfriend with his cloying, creepy house-husband ways, Brody is reminded about the paper napkin contract and that time is running out. Thus he takes it upon himself to try and find someone for Myles including all the usual shenanigans like setting up a Grindr profile for him and bringing him to a sex shop to explore more diverse sexual interests.

What I Liked: The movie had some interesting ideas in terms of what they wanted to accomplish in the movie. And you can sort of glimpse those ideas independently and you can sort of visualize how they might work as like individual comedy sketches. They don't necessarily work together on a consistent basis when taken as a single entertainment experience, but I suppose it's the thought that counts.

And some points can be given that Turner is pretty hot and thankfully not clean-shaven. Too many movies default to blond, blue-eyed boys with bare chests as if we all want to get in bed with sanitized Ken dolls or something. So I do appreciate  their tastes when it comes to the lead, I suppose.

What Could Have Been Better: Unfortunately a lot about this movie just didn't quite work out. The leads are attractive but also somewhat generic and they seem too alike in terms of general appearance and tone of acting. The story as a whole is very cliche with all the tropes you'd expect from the likes of an unlikely romance between two very different characters. Things just don't make sense in the long run though so the resolution at the end feels overly forced.

And as much as the leads aren't too great, there's not much to say about the rest of the supporting cast so it's just a lot of noise. Thus all the more you end up focusing on the two leads and this is how you determine how unrealistic the two characters are as they are extreme stereotypes of possible guys out there.

TL;DR: The 10 Year Plan feels like a story that should have come out 10 or so years ago. The concept is old and the way they approached things was unremarkable and its such a shame that it wasn't more complex. Thus the movie only gets 2 silly gay stereotypes that the movie leans on too much out of a possible 5.