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Film Review by John Demetry
Possibly the best American Queer film of its type, All Over the Guy ingeniously reworks this familiar straight genre. All Over the Guy is a genuinely joyful, hopeful emotional movie experience. Who could want more? Even the characters banter about their expectations of movies. Eli, played by the film's screenwriter Dan Bucatinsky, gushes over In & Out on his first, disastrous date with Tom (Richard Ruccolo). Tom and Eli's mother, played by Andrea Martin, get to sound off hilariously on that film's offenses. Especially memorable, Martin executes her final cursing of In & Out with comic timing to die for. Eli also complains of the exploitative pseudo-pornography of gay "art" films that Tom makes him see. Tom and Eli eventually resolve their differences when their personal takes on Gone With the Wind achieve a moving and funny harmony. The advanced pop humanism of Julie Davis' direction surpasses both the "Hollywood blowjob" Tom calls In & Out and the art-film "pandering" Eli despises. Yet, Davis appreciates both perspectives. She recognizes the needs they fulfill for Eli and Tom's embittered romanticism. Davis and cinematographer Goran Pavicevic imbue the film with romantic-funny colors and lighting that buzz with unexpected bliss.
Luminous with the pleasure of performing together, the four lead actors shed light on the emotional complexity of their characters. The performers' contest of wits constructs insightful layers of characterization. The characters themselves display hyper-real wits - as in Jackie's description of the bodily contortion required to get a good reception on her cellular phone. That explains part of their attraction to each other, making their relationships believable by conveying the special language of friends and the flirtatious repartee of potential lovers. The actors nail this aspect of their characters, but they also hammer home the ways people use wit to communicate, cause, and conceal pain. After the Tom and Eli's first date, their friends scratch their sarcastic surfaces to find an essential loneliness. Eli uses his intelligence to make Tom feel stupid about his take on "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear" or his improper English saying, "Alls I know is." In such moments, the audience laughs at Eli - rather than with him -- because Bucatinsky makes such cruelty intimately familiar. In the early AA scene that introduces Tom's crises, Ruccolo covers his quivering lips and teary eyes with a laugh: "So, I've given up boys and drinks because I can't handle either." This double-edged comedy sharpens audience perception and recognition. The audience laughs at itself. In the film's funniest scene, Alexander squares off against Lisa Kudrow in a cameo. The feeling of each actress trying to top the other is giddily palpable. (For me, Alexander wins when Davis provides her with a vibrantly funny close-up reaction shot.) This scene underscores the film's comic technique inviting the audience to think and feel along with the performers - to share their joy.
Christina Ricci and Dan Bucatinsky star in All Over the Guy
That's what raises All Over the Guy above stereotypes and cliches. For example, although Martin does the overbearing Jewish mother bit perfectly, she also embroiders the role with humane humor. Making a joke, she laughs at her own cleverness. This complicates Eli's fish-eyed flashbacks about his childhood that turn his mother into the subject of his humor and horror. The four lead actors enrich their characters with such surprises. Not only neurotic and needy, Bucatinsky plays Eli as goofily erotic and worthy of being needed. Rucculo's revelatory performance reveals more than the softness beneath Tom's cynical alcoholic exterior, but expresses how that vulnerability has been hard-won. Bucatinsky and Rucculo reconcile the personal and interpersonal conflicts of their characters when they make love. "Look at me," Eli says to Tom, "I love you." Brett identifies the color buttercup as well as any stereotypical gay man, but Golberg's delicate portrayal of sensitivity, insecurity, and stability transcends hetero male clichés. He finds the perfect match in Alexander's initially shallow, yet sexy and acerbic, Jackie. They radiate a warm sensuality when she tells Brett that she's pregnant. He nuzzles her belly and she laughs so hard you know she's never been so in love. The discoveries these four performers find in their characters give off an afterglow akin to discovering love. Love forms the foundation for the building of a new and beneficial "family." It's not a slight social vision, but an attainable one. The subtle personal-political anxieties exposed in Tom's alcoholism that originated with his alcoholic parents and of Eli awaiting the results of an HIV test underscore the import of the film's faith. "What do you want?" Tom asks Eli. That's also the call of All Over the Guy to the audience. With great pop like this, each laugh and tear stands as a hopeful response. |
Adam Goldberg and Dan Bucatinsky are complete opposites set up by their straight friends 
© 1997-2002 BEI