cardbord cutouts - not believable

Rating: 4/10 (26 March 2006)

The professional reviews for this film are strange. Some loved it. A few thought it was formulaic. One wanted more body fluids to show up in the gay sex scene. I didn't have the later sentiment. It's possible it was formulaic perhaps. It wasn't particularly moving for me though either. What I came away from the film with was this impression: The movie was believable up until the first gay sex scene. And all the subsequent gay encounters were not believable either. At one point one of the two core cowboys met another presumably gay man and he asked him out. I watched in disbelief and wondered "how the hell did he know that third man was gay?" It was as if they both had built in gay-dar. Maybe since I'm not gay (so far as I know, but I'm pretty sure not) maybe I don't have a keen gay-dar spidey-sense, and perhaps I cannot recognize it in others. On the other hand perhaps the best option is to go with my first and continuing core impressions on this one, and that is this: all the gay portrayals in this film felt fake and artificial and like cardboard. Perhaps the more emotionally malleable or infantile among us saw great & deep meaning & value, & sucked up all the stuff which selected professional reviewers saw through as trite formula. As for me I found the film boring, not satisfying for the most part, and largely not believable.