8 March 2010
Mulligans (2008)
Attempting to corner the market on reviews for awful gay movies available via Netflix streaming, Mulligans is but another conquest deserving of the addition of three sub-categories and a new major category. I must admit: the quest is not mine, rather: Eugene’s. And it is he who is on the quest to find a decent, non-insulting gay movie that isn’t half-stupid. I am merely the dutiful reporter, press card tucked in my whimsical fedora, trailing behind with my scratch pad attempting to take it all in.
Mulligans, by Chip Hale, is not as bad as its first 45 minutes portend. It eventually gets its hooks into you and you begrudgingly accept that it isn’t Night at the Roxbury. I’m not sure I can pinpoint the problem with gay movies in one little posting – but they’re never any good. And a caveat that I’m excluding major Hollywood efforts from this quest, the likes of Brokeback Mountain, Milk and Philadelphia, which are all good gay movies, but deserving of their own category yet to be formed on this blog: GGMWTGGDATE. Yes – exactly. Good Gay Movies Where The Gay Guy Dies At The End. This is the Hollywood gay movie. Only movies about lesbians have found their way out of the hurky-lurky shallowed dregs of gay movies where Mulligans resides onto the fairway.
Seriously: marvel at all the pained attempts to equate a hole in one and golfing positions with gay sex. Sure, one maybe, but again and and again and again. This movie is so tone deaf that I assumed the two boys were gay lovers at the beginning.* Yet, alas, college homostud Chase is just going home with his straight-strapping bud Tyler. The plot scrub says “two friends from college go home for the summer and one of them makes a mistake that may tear a family apart.” And yet it’s the father that makes the mistake, right? Oh so many years ago. Chip Hale stars in an upcoming short called BBQ; scrub says: “Friends. Grill. Meat. Secrets.”
But okay okay, it’s the dad that makes this ultimately not a virulent spastic self-hatred-encouraging bile fest like Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds. Or was that the first one we watched? His character is decently fleshed out and tragic, and the film’s ultimate prognosis is that sometimes in life there are no mulligans. I don’t remember an overwrought golfing scene with father and son talking about 9 woods (aw yeah) and 3 irons (aw yeah) and sand wedg(i)es or putting clubs (come again?), or the explanation of what a mulligan actually is*, so it should be commended on the level of not driving its central metaphor into a sandtrap. Sometimes, little Birdie, there are no mulligans.
* Eugene points out that I wasn’t watching or paying attention during the first 15 minutes, so obviously I didn’t know they were just friends. Apparently I also missed the explanation of what a mulligan is. C’est la vie.
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2 Comments currently posted.
engine says:
jake says:
yes, the production here was good. but what made the story not work for me was the lack of focus on the dramatic elements (the family, mainly). it’s not Chase’s story, and yet we see him somberly painting, and giving the family the picture at the end, etc. You can see that director Chip Hale wants to tell a somber, slow moving (god it’s so long! Tyler stomps off while his buddy attempts to apologize six or seven times!) tale about a closeted man and the stress he puts on his grow(n/ing) family, but instead we’re forced to endure friendship-scenes between Tyler and Chase while Tyler’s mother’s reaction is completely written. She’s devastated and then, woops, she’s understanding!
i’m beginning to think that this quest for a good gay indie movie will not yield anything. in all other respects, the movie looked well-made: good camera work, decent actor
s(the dad was decent), original score (ick!), good location, high quality film…. er. a nice vintage porsche that never gets driven.come to think of it, i feel duped by the shininess of the package, only to find a smelly turd of a storyline inside.