Reviews

Angelo Florendo of The Imprint reviewed the world premiere of Most Guys Today at the Rainbow Reels festival.

Note: Due to technical problems, Rainbow Reels showed a VHS copy of Most Guys Today (not the DVD) projected onto a large screen.

Most Guys takes viewers where most indie films won't

Angelo Florendo - Imprint staff

Most Guys Today
Ty Adams
Greek Chorus Productions

Evan, the protagonist in Most Guys Today, is a single, attractive, aspiring filmmaker living in a downtown Toronto bachelor pad. Unfortunately, he's also miserable, superficial and, just as quickly as we're introduced to him, no longer living by himself. His brother Jay is coming in from Vancouver and needs a place to crash. How typical.

What's not so typical, however, is that Evan is unquestionably gay. He isn't playing the usual "brother in denial" role either; Jay knows Evan is gay right from the start of the movie and has no problems with it. Within the first five minutes, Most Guys Today manages to zoom past all the prototypical issues that other films linger on for more than 90.

The film, a comedy written and produced by former UW student Steve Hutton, was screened for the first time at the Rainbow Reels Queer Film Festival, held on campus in the DC.

Following Evan through his pursuits into dating, brotherhood, dating, filmmaking and more dating, the film manages to take the breakneck speed of the introduction and keep the pace up without feeling rushed.

Though Evan is the story's main focus, at times it feels more like an instructional video on popular dating techniques - and intentionally so, as Hutton expertly integrates '50s educational videos to segue between scenes. Though the inclusion of these archaic films - which refer to homosexuals as sexual deviants - seem at first to be a snide insult to the idiocy of past generations, Hutton says this isn't true. They're present because most of the underlying concepts still apply and he has found a way to use these same educational videos for extremely modern scenarios such as Internet dating.

It may not be clear from the description so far, but this movie is an absolute riot. Yes, gay stereotypes are present - as typified by the cookie-cutter gay boy-band The Silly Gigolos - but done entirely tongue-in-cheek. Yes, there are sex scenes, but they're what Hutton calls "shocking, but just enough shocking." The character dialogues are easily the strongpoint of the film, as they manage to get around the shoddy picture quality, allowing even the most ridiculous scenes to seem at least plausible.

Jay's character is especially interesting. The initial impression we get is that he is the archetypal freeloading, crotch-grabbing straight guy - a sort of whipping boy for the gay characters to secretly mock. But, as is true for all of Hutton's main characters, we learn more about him as the story progresses, and at the film's conclusion we see that he's, well...a freeloading, crotch-grabbing straight guy, but also somehow entirely loveable - the brother you always wished you could avoid.

Low production quality aside, this is a fantastic independent film with sharp writing, a strong performing cast and enough laughs to win over almost anyone. If you have a chance to view what is sure to be a very limited release, make sure you jump on the opportunity to see this uniquely funny film.