This was a bit of a strange experience for me. I knew fairly little about it going in, other than that it seemed to go down quite well at the London Film Festival. I also assumed it was an A24 release, which it quite clearly isn’t. I think my mental image was of an art house, highbrow queer commentary, and for a good chunk of the film I almost kept up the belief that it was that. It’s not, it’s essentially your typical Judd Apatow film except it’s written by a gay man about gay issues in a very clever way.
Some of the jokes went completely over my head until I started looking into the film a bit more. I didn’t realise how meta the casting of Luke Macfarlane was, but having now looked at his filmography I think it’s brilliant that they managed to cast him as the basic guy from a Hallmark family. The jokes that I did understand were very well crafted, and they all had a necessary bite in terms of highlighting real life issues. On one hand it’s a light comedy but on the other it really does have a lot to say.
I can’t claim it’s a masterpiece or that it’s breaking new ground or anything, but I do think it’s a very enjoyable light comedy that will spark a lot of conversation for the right circles of people. And to be honest, it’s nice to see a mainstream release that treats queer people with their due respect rather than as a bunch of monolithic beings. From that point of view, I really hope it does well enough to at least be remembered as this generation’s new Superbad or something.
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