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Source:
rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
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Proceed no further, Gentle Reader, if you are of a delicate constitution or prefer to see your films with no potential surprises revealed: I am about to "out" IN & OUT. You see, the Paramount marketing department has been living a lie. They've been selling IN & OUT in commercials and theatrical trailers as the story of Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline), an Indiana high school teacher who hears his former student, actor Cameron Drake (Matt Dillon), thank him during an Academy Awards acceptance speech...while simultaneously announcing to the world that Howard is gay. Only Howard insists he's _not_ gay. In fact, he's engaged to be married in less than a week to long-time sweetheart Emily Montgomery (Joan Cusack). It's all a big misunderstanding, he claims, based on his cleanliness, his sense of style, and his inordinate fondness for the Barbra Streisand oeuvre.
Don't be deceived, Gentle Reader. It turns out that Howard really is gay, a fact which is driven home when a gay tabloid television reporter (played by Tom Selleck!) plants a 15-second kiss on his lips. An audible gasp rustled through the auditorium where I saw the film when the audience suddenly realized it had been duped. A woman near me muttered, "That is disgusting." Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Heterosexual-American, expecting a straight farce from IN & OUT -- emphasis on "straight" -- may be in for a very rude awakening.
I'm not averse to rude awakenings as a rule; in fact, I think cinema in particular could use a lot more of them. In this case, however, the premise they're selling is so much more interesting than the premise they end up using. If IN & OUT had been about a genuinely heterosexual man who finds himself in the middle of such a controversy, screenwriter Paul Rudnick could have taken deadly aim at many societal quirks: the automatic presumption that accusations are true, the reaction of activist groups to such an announcement (and its subsequent denial), the stereotypical pereceptions both of truly masculine and suspiciously effeminate behavior. For about half its running time, IN & OUT is heading in the right direction, but as soon as Howard admits that he's gay, it feels like all the satirical energy has been sapped from the film. It becomes just another sincere plea for tolerance and understanding -- pleasant and laudable, but lacking bite.
It's tough to be too hard on IN & OUT, because Rudnick's script is so often so sharp. When he sets his acidic sights on targets like supermodels (one is reduced to tears by her inability to operate a rotary phone) and Steven Seagal's thesping skills (he is one of Cameron's fellow Best Actor nominees for his performance in SNOWBALL IN HELL), the results are blistering. The cast supports the script with uniformly solid work, particularly Joan Cusack in a brilliant physical performance which turns a wedding dress into a spectacularly versatile comic prop.
Kevin Kline's performance is also satisfying...at least half of it is. He's charming early on both in his exasperated insistence on his own heterosexuality and in his living room boogie to "I Will Survive." He just doesn't know what to do with himself once he comes out, nor does the script know what to do with him. For the final half hour, Howard simply sits around waiting for the people of Greenleaf, Indiana either to accept him or reject him. As a protagonist, he turns into a doormat.
I'm not sure if director Frank Oz (HOUSESITTER, DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS) could have made a film with the kind of dead-eye social commentary the "straight" IN & OUT would have required. I would have liked to see him try, though. This is one of the year's few unquestionably funny comedies, yet it's also one of the most frustrating. Give the Paramount marketing department credit for coming up with one of the most hilarious comic plots in recent memory, the plot to the great film IN & OUT _almost_ was. Instead, it's here, and it's queer, and I guess we'll have to get used to it.
By : Scott Renshaw
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Source:
rec.art.movies.reviews newsgroup
Rating:
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This movie is a lighthearted comedy about acceptance. The dilemma is set up in the first few minutes when former student Cameron Drake (Matt Dillon), now a celebrity actor, receives a Best Actor award for playing a gay soldier who gets discharged when it is discovered that he has Bette Middler movies in his possession. As Drake accepts the Best Actor award, he mentions that he owes his inspiration to Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline), the high school English teacher of his hometown of Greenleaf. Cameron tosses in a comment about Brackett's being gay. The folksy residents of Greenleaf are wonderful but homophobic, so the tight community nearly faints at the unbelievable revelation, especially since it is only a few days before Brackett's wedding to long-suffering fiancee Emily (Joan Cusack) and the town's upcoming Best Teacher Contest and high school graduation. After showcasing humorous reactions from reporter Peter Malloy (Tom Selleck), the townspeople, students, and Brackett himself, the movie takes us through the town's two big events and into the ending.
Opinion: In a light farce meant to satirize tabloid journalism, high school principals, old TV shows, and stereotypes, it's surprising to find a complicated character, but Kevin Kline successfully pulls off a lot of implied character depth without unbalancing the movie's lighthearted tone. Joan Cusack is sufficiently befuddled and exasperated as the fiancee. Since the movie, like an interview, consists mostly of peoples' overreactions to a single revelation, enjoyment of this comedy rests on how funny the townspeople's remarks are, and scads of one-liners are thrown, shotgun style, to probe for laughs in different directions. For example: bachelor party guys end up arguing over Barbara Streisand's movie, ‘Yentl,'; movie star Cameron (Matt Dillon) tells his whiny supermodel girlfriend, "You look like a Swizzle stick," and; a gossipy old woman confesses faking Rice Krispy treats in explaining that everyone has something to hide.
By : David Sunga
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