Review of Eating Out (2004) by Daniel P — 29 Apr 2008

Spoilers are plentiful, not that it matters. Caleb, unhappy with his sex life, is convinced by his gay flatmate Kyle that the best way for him to find a woman is to pretend to be gay. Apparently, since coming out, Kyle has been hounded by hundreds of eligible woman all desperate to 'turn' him and get inside his pants, and so thinks this is the obvious solution for Caleb.

Please, credit me with some fucking intelligence. Not only do I find the notion of being able to 'turn' someone, gay or straight, completely vacuous, but it's also offensive that the film shows such little respect for women.

It's this kind of simplistic, clichéd thinking that gives GLBT cinema a bad name. [Swiftly steps off the soapbox]. Anyway, so Caleb meets the woman of his dreams, Gwen, but, surprise, surprise, she believes him gay and so sets him up with her GBF (gay best friend) Marc.

Caleb agrees to go out with him in order to try and get closer to Gwen. In one of the most successful scenes (everything before and after hinges on it), Gwen has phone sex with Caleb whilst Marc goes down on him.

This moment in the film is surprisingly well performed, is reasonably witty and successfully edited, but it is also (forgive the pun) very hard to swallow. Sorry, couldn't help myself there. This moment apart, there's very little to distinguish the film from any of the other 'straight guy pretending to be gay' films of which there are now so many they're practically a sub-genre.

In addition, Eating Out is amateurishly filmed, badly acted in the majority and completely predictable. The ending where the four leads confess their true feelings for one another is not only ridiculous, it is, in the case of Marc and Kyle, completely out of character.

Are we really expected to believe that Marc has been harbouring feelings for 'plain' Kyle (who is of course very good looking, just less of a muscle freak show than Caleb and Marc) all along? Hampered by poor dialogue, the only other saving grace is the one-liners from Caleb's little sister, but these are unfortunately delivered by an actress who clearly has infinitesimal talent.