November 05, 2009 -- This low-budget film explores relationships between three people under some strange circumstances. It isn't very believable most of the time, but it has a few scenes of clarity. Much of the time, the characters act like actors caught in a clunky off-Broadway play rather than real people. While the acting is not bad, the story fails at several levels. The basic premise is farfetched and two of the main characters are not appealing. Adults behaving as children can be funny, but in order to be funny, they also have to be appealing.

The plot has Ben (Mark Duplass) and Anna (Alycia Delmore) as a young couple planning to start a family. In the middle of the night, an old friend of Ben's comes knocking at the door, Andrew (Joshua Leonard). Andrew is an artist who's been on the road living a Jack Kerouac-like lifestyle. Both Ben and Andrew envy each other's lives. One night Ben joins Andrew at a wild party attended by other artists and the two men come up with a crazy idea for an erotic art film about two guys, played by Ben and Andrew, having gay sex as straight guys. Drunkeness and drugs had a lot to do with this sounding like a good idea.

After they sober up the next day, Andrew says he will let Ben off the hook, but Ben says he wants to go ahead with the gay porn film idea. The two agree to meet in a hotel room to make the film, provided Anna says it is O.K. Ben starts to tell Anna about the idea, but then chickens out and starts lying. Eventually, Anna learns the truth and Ben is in big trouble. She asks him why he wants to do this and it turns out he is feeling cramped in his current lifestyle. Anna decides maybe he needs to “get this out of his system.”

Ben argues that he is not the square, conventional husband he seems to be and Andrew is not exactly the free spirit he seems to be either. Anna reveals that she is not some “cardboard cutout who makes meals” either. A confrontational scene between Anna and Ben is one of the best scenes in the film when she reveals a previously unknown side. There is also a funny scene in the film in which Ben tells Andrew of homosexual feelings he once had for another man. Other than those two scenes, the film seemed somewhat forced and artificial. Although Anna seemed like a real person, Ben and Andrew did not. This film is not very believable, and it really doesn't seem to go anywhere. It rates a D.

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Copyright © 2009 Robert Roten. All rights reserved.
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