Review of Poster Boy (2004) by Wizard W — 08 Nov 2004

Wow, the second movie I've seen this week at the G&L Film Festival with a former Oscar nominee in a thankless, one-dimensional role that could have been played by anyone. This time it's Michael Lerner, whom you may recall yelling at John Turturro in Barton Fink. And to be fair, his role in [i]Poster Boy[/i] couldn't have played by just anyone. In fact, Lerner seems to be playing Charles Durning playing Jack Kray, a conservative North Carolina senator up for re-election. He huffs about, complains about liberals, acts mean to everyone and generally overacts bloatedly, like any given Marlon Brando performance after, say, 1973.

In other words, he acts just like you'd expect a Republican senator to be portrayed in a film playing at a gay and lesbian film festival. And that's part of the problem.

Poster Boy is essentially the story of Jack Kray's son Henry, a young man attending his first year at the college where his father is about to give a big speech. Henry's gay, but not out to his family, though it seems like everyone else on the campus knows it, including the leader of the the campus Republicans. Henry eventually hooks up with Anthony (Jack Noseworthy, a 34-year-old playing a 28-year-old who passes as a 21-year-old) as a one-night stand, but former ACT-UP activist Anthony won't leave him alone, and sees him as a way to make a statement against his gay-bashing father.

Shot on digital video, director Zak Tucker has used the verite approach, shooting most of the scenes like a documentary, which kind of works, as much of the film is told in flashbacks, as Henry relates his story to a journalist. (It's a bit unclear how he's relating Anthony's story to him as well, but whatever.) This feel can work amazingly well, if the film is balls-to-the-wall realistic (a la [i]The Son[/i]) or clearly a satire (like the works of Christopher Guest), but[i] Poster Boy[/i] isn't really either. The characters don't quite come off as real enough to be characters in a documentary--they're just movie characters, going through the paces of the plot.

The exception is Karen Allen, playing Henry's mother, who starts out the film as a caricature of a southern belle but eventually manages to become the best realized, most well-developed thing on screen. She's the only character that doesn't seem to be constantly be speaking all of her emotions out loud to the camera, and it comes off as a great nuanced performance in an otherwise obvious film.

And obvious it is. You'd have to be blind not to notice the similarities to our current administration, gender change or not (and, c'mon, have you seen Mary Chaney?), and [i]Poster Boy[/i] wears its' politics on its' sleeve so readily that they overcome the film to the point where plot threads don't make any sense. One sub-plot, involving Henry bonding with the head of the campus Republicans by hiring him a stripper, shows up in the first third and leads absolutely nowhere.

Not to say [i]Poster Boy[/i] is a bad film. The performances by those given something tangible to work with are good, and there are potentially interesting concepts at work here. The two leads don't really have any chemistry, but they're likable, if not exactly compelling. In the end, though, it's obvious that their relationship won't really go anywhere once the attraction to their mismatched politics wears off, and the same can be said for [i]Poster Boy[/i], a mediocre film with good ideas and no real clue what to do with them.