Reeling

>> A broken movie

by MATTHEW HAYS

 If the whole gay-crowd-as-alternative-family theme seems a bit trite to you, you're probably best off staying away from the latest queer-themed feature, The Broken Hearts Club.

 Based in L.A., the film is populated by a group of young gay men, all out and looking for love. There's one on-again, off-again couple, a hunky guy (Superman's Dean Cain), a funny token black guy, a queenie guy and one old guy for good measure (Frasier's John Mahoney, who's really slumming it here). The gang exchange one-liners and work in a chi-chi resto.

 At one point, the lead character complains about the dearth of gay representations in Hollywood movies, exclaiming, "Wouldn't it be cool if there was a movie with us in it?" I think this was meant to be clever but, rather than making me laugh or ponder its cleverness, the line left me hoping there won't be too many more gay representations in cinema. Schooled from a wee age on Vito Russo's The Celluloid Closet--the book that tore apart Hollywood for keeping us invisible for so long--I'm now thinking about that old line about being careful for what you wish for.

 Screenwriter-director Greg Berlanti makes some jaw-droppingly bad choices (and the film suffers in such close proximity to the dreadful Americanization of the Brit series Queer as Folk). While it's understandable that gays are weary of discussions about AIDS, it is a bit ridiculous to take us through more than 90 minutes with utterly no mention of the epidemic. And though these characters are clearly intended to be sympathetic, I have trouble feeling any connection whatsoever to a bunch as shallow, trite and dimwitted as these types. Onscreen complaints about how gay men have been treated by filmmakers also seem a wee bit hypocritical since, once more in a gay-authored film, lesbians are depicted as control-freak bitches who want little or nothing to do with gay men beyond harvesting their sperm (again, shades of Queer as Folk). Do gay men and lesbians really have this much trouble getting along?

 Thus a light romantic comedy like this simply depressed the Hell out of me. What questions the film hoped to raise--the looks obsession, the place of older gay men in the community, the continued Hollywood closet--are really dealt with only superficially at best. But the movie really blows its chances when it resorts to the last refuge of bad screenwriters, the sudden-tragic-death-followed-by-pathos-ridden-funeral scene. The Broken Hearts Club opens Friday, Feb. 9. Let me know if it's really that bad or if I just had too much coffee the morning I screened it.

 In better gay-related news, the latest episode of In the Life, this one dedicated to Black History Month, will air on our local PBS station on Monday, Feb. 12 at 10:30 p.m. Here's a program always worth checking out. :

 Comments? mhays@mtl-mirror.com