I know that sometimes I complain too much, but on the other hand there are movies like latter days that are the closest thing to gay-xplotation that could exists. In greece we saw it in 2006 with a two years delay, but still that is not the reason I was disappointed by the film.
The main story goes like this: Aaron is a young Mormon missionary who wants to make his parents proud. His two passions are films and religion. Christian is a waiter, typical gay party boy looking for his next mr Right Now. Aaron and three other missionaries move into the apartment across from Christian, and teh young hottie is challenged by his friends to have one of the mormons in his bed. Aaron becomes the main target, but problems get on the way: Christian is falling in love with Aaron and the Mormons are not the biggest fans of the homosexual community. At one point Aaron is discovered and a series of trials of regret, loss, perseverance, and forgiveness follows…
C. Jay Cox’s film is based so much on stereotypes and at sometimes is vulgar. The opening scenes with Christian inviting a guy in his appartment who ends up having sex with, only to realize that he was not the guy he was chatting on the net, but a straight guy visiting the girl on the next appartment puts the main atmosphere of the film. All can be lured into having gay sex, it’s great and it’s painless, no strings attached. On the other hand you have Aaron who is a Mormon, just because they needed a strong religious background (probbaly catholic wouldn’t work as mush) but never quite convincing of how much they ever cared. Aaron has found religion and it’s his faith that makes him looking for love, and probably is his quest for love that actually keeps him away from the dirty one-night, carnal love of gay life.
From the start you know hgow the story will go on as you have the typical story of boy-meets-girl-place a bet-wins girl-falls in love-looses girl, with the twist of no girl but boy. So Aaron falls in love with Christian, who discovers his feelings -“you turn into a chick” we hear christian’s best friend telling. So Christian gives up everything, the booze and the one night stands just to be with Aaron. Religion really helps I guess, maybe they are having sex under a picture of a saint or prophet, or whatever (brrrrrr). So what a joy, a guy saved from his filty life and another one not discovering his sexuality but love!
I think is silly to make a film about Mormons and gay life, especially when Angels In America have already aired. There you could actually see what was going on and see a whole context and not some silly flashes that just stereotype everyone. Cox probaby wanted to comment on Mormons but I think he makes a more negative comment on gay life as it is, while adding to the negative stereotypes of the over-sexually-loaded community.
Apart frm the whole cntext of the film that really makes me wonder what they wanted to show, teh problem is that is also bad as a film. It is quite boring, predictable and the acting is not that great. you can say that Wes Ramsey and Steve Sandvoss are cute and the director love to have them naked but still is not as arousing as you hear it. I find it hard to even care about the characters, despite me having a crash for these angelic Mormon missionaries that used to came in greece, they were all coming from model religious land and I juast wanted to believe! (Unfortunatelly now they are not as cute…)
Stereotyped, predicatble, rhythmeless and pointless, a romantic comedy into all the cliche you would expect and as shallow as they want to portray Christian’s character. And the worst thing it has a big fan base, like cinema has not produce any movies. You want gay mormons see Angels in America, you want hot boys having sex see Ozon’s films, you want more hardcore stuff but not porn there is Shortbus.
