“FAILS TO RAISE THE BAR”
Starring: Mark Duplass, Joshua Leonard, Alycia Delmore, Lynn Shelton, and Tania Kupczak
Directed by: Lynn Shelton
MPAA Rating: R for some strong sexual content, pervasive language and a scene of drug use.
Genre: Comedy
By John Delia
Although Humpday is groundbreaking in that it show’s the other side of the temptation to experiment with alternate sex, I found the film insincere and lifeless. In fact I really don’t know to what lifestyle to even recommend the movie. Most of the gay lifestylers will leave the theater with an empty feeling, and I don’t think male straights will make it thorough to the enlightening ending. I guess that leaves the female gender that will probably just gape at the plot and come out with a – well that was interesting sentiment.
It’s been a decade since Ben (Duplass) and Andrew (Leonard) were the bad boys of their college campus. Ben has settled down and found a job, wife, and home. Andrew took the alternate route as a vagabond artist, skipping the globe from Chiapas to Cambodia. When Andrew shows up unannounced on Ben’s doorstep, they easily fall back into their old dynamic of macho one-upmanship. Late into the night at a wild party, the two find themselves locked in a mutual dare: to enter an amateur porn contest together. But what kind of boundary-breaking, envelope pushing porn can two straight dudes make? After the booze and drugs run out, only one idea remains—they will have sex together…on camera. It’s not gay; it’s beyond gay. It’s not porn; it’s art. But how exactly will it work? And more importantly, who will tell Anna (Delmore), Ben’s wife?
I did like Joshua Leonard and Mark Duplass in the roles of the two befuddled guys who really had no notion on what they found themselves getting into. But taking on the gay porno film idea in the first place really wasn’t made realistic to me enough to carry it out in the first place. Leonard’s position of thinking his wife wouldn’t think he was cheating on her because he was experimenting is very far fetched even in today’s society. As for Duplass’s Ben, popping back into his best friend’s life that was trying to start a family and even suggesting he get involved with a porno film is just down right cold.
Writer/director Shelton really looses sight of the fact that her characters have a very small window of credibility. Maybe she was considering that every male has latent homosexual tendencies and that given the right opportunity would pounce at the chance. In her story she clearly leads one to believe that she makes a good case, but looses out to me with this effort.
The film is rated R for some strong sexual content, pervasive language and a scene of drug use.
FINAL ANALYSIS: The double meaning Humpday fails to raise the bar. (1.5 of 5 Palm Trees)
NOTE: hump day (The middle of a work week – Wednesday; used in the context of climbing a proverbial hill to get through a tough week.)