Single All the Way - a film review

 There are so many ways to look at art criticism. As a teacher, I've always been fond of the self-deprecating line, "Those who can, do; those who can't, teach." I get a superior feeling from acting humble. I've seen a lot of bad teachers, but probably even more good ones, so I'm very proud to be associated with the teaching profession. Right up there, I think with the nursing profession. People who see how wretched things can get but are not deterred, and go on acting as if the world can be made a better place.

There's a corollary to "those who can't, teach...," an extension. Those who can't do and who can't teach become critics.

A friend I share movie recommendations with just recommended Single All the Way to me, the Christmas film Netflix released two months ago, on December 2nd, in time for the Christmas season. One of those smarmy Hallmarky-type films (this one's Canadian) aimed at middle-class America. The type serious critics sneer at. The play on words with "Jingle All the Way" is trying too hard to be cute, maybe, but when you go Hallmark, I guess you go all the way. 

First, let's get its limitations over with, legitimate reasons a critic looking for insightful drama, tension or originality might find it wanting. It's got the most clichéd of plot lines - boy goes home to his small town family for Christmas, realizes what treasures they are (the town and the family) and leaves his fast-track life in the big city (Hollywood, in this case) behind. And if that were not enough, it pushes the plot lines until they scream: the perfect solutions to his dilemma all fall in his lap, although the story does need a deus ex machina to make it work; the boyfriend writes one children's book which makes him enough money to live months without a job; and people encounter other people at just the right time to make the story cohere.

Peter, our protagonist, played by Michael Urie of Ugly Betty fame, works on social media campaigns in Los Angeles and hates his job. He decides to go home for Christmas, but dreads all the gas he knows he's going to get from his family because he doesn't have a boyfriend. He persuades his roommate and best friend, Nick, played by Philemon Chambers, to come with him and pretend to be his lover to keep his family off his back. But before he can tell his mother that he and Nick have gotten together romantically, his mother, played by Kathy Najimy, who showed her acting chops playing Sister Mary Patrick, the with-it nun, in Sister Act in 1992, has set him up with James, her gym trainer, played by Luke Macfarlane, who played the gay lover of Kevin, one of the brothers in the 2006 TV series, Brothers and Sisters.

I know this is too much information squeezed into one short paragraph, but I did it for a reason, which I'll get to in a minute. Nick, it turns out, really is in love with Peter, but has never told him so. The feeling might be mutual, but Peter has a terrible record of not being able to make any of his relationships work, and is determined not to risk exposing his feelings for Nick because their connection too would probably go off the tracks and he would lose his best friend. Or so he fears.

His mother is pushing Peter into a relationship with James, the drop-dead gorgeous trainer. Peter's father and sisters, on the other hand, are convinced he belongs with Nick. It's not as cheesy as it sounds, because the actors are so appealing and you get caught up in the subterfuge. 

But here's the problem, at least for me. I thought Luke Macfarlane was one of the most attractive men I'd ever seen when I saw him play a romantic character on Brothers and Sisters. So ordinarily, I'd think of Peter as an idiot for not thinking likewise (I know, I'm showing my inability to separate fiction on the screen from real life). But at the same time, the more I watched the Nick character, Philemon Chambers, the more I decided he's every bit as attractive as the James character, and how did Peter ever get so lucky as to have this dilemma to have to work out?

Here's why I risked squeezing too much information into a single paragraph. And here's why I say I'm really not interested in listening to critics tell me this is a grade B movie at best. Perhaps so, if you want to keep your bona fides as a critic in top shape. But I'm a gay man who was a teenager in the 1950s and homophobia is the chronic disease of the age that affected me most directly. I can't help watching every gay-themed movie without seeing it as a sociologist does, as a measure of social progress and the fight for gay liberation.

Do you have any idea how good it feels to watch a film where a gay man comes home to an entire loving family of folk who want him to find a life-partner and be happy? Mother, father, sisters, crazy aunt? They're all working full-time assuming they have it in their power to make love happen. There's not a single ounce of homophobia in this story. It's not just an appreciation of same-sex love and marriage; it's a celebration of it.

And that's just the beginning of the good news. Things just get better when you see who got to play the major roles in this production. The three men in the triangle, Peter, Nick and James, are all gay in real life. The mother, Kathy Najimy, is a hero to the LGBT community for her activism for women's and gay rights - she and her husband were married by Gloria Steinem, no less.  (The husband has a cameo role in the film, by the way.)  The father is played by Barry Bostwick, who launched his career playing opposite Susan Sarandon in The Rocky Horror Picture Show in 1975. Aunt Sandy is played by the comedic bombshell (that's the Hallmark male hetero word for women with big boobs, if I'm not mistaken.) Jennifer Coolidge, known from a large number of films, including the four cult-film sex comedies, American Pie. Peter's sister, Lisa, is played by Jennifer Robertson, known for her hilariously funny role as the sister in Schitt's Creek. All in all, it's a great crew of first-rate, mostly Canadian, actors.

If you're of the gay political camp that hates it that gays and lesbians are trying so hard to go mainstream, this is not the film for you. It's also not for you if you squirm when you see black characters living so tight inside an otherwise all-white world, with no other black characters in sight, or if you have other reservations about what is a bit of socialist realism. On the other hand, watch it if you're Canadian, and be proud. Watch it if you're LGBT and feel it's time we had a happy film completely free of homophobia. An unabashed gay romcom and not a coming-out story. Watch it if you need an antidote to the steady diet of bad news we've been getting lately. Put it off till the next Christmas season, if you have trouble putting Santa and February in the same sentence. But then watch it. A little schmalz won't hurt you.

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