Harry And Max (or Barry and Crocker Shit)

One of my biggest gripes about queer cinema is its relative lack of production values, good writing or character development. I can only postulate that this comes about because there is a definite niche market that will always see these films at queer film festivals or buy them on Amazon no matter what their quality (or, rather, as long as they have hot guys in them). Even when attempting to tackle weighty and important themes these films are generally pallid and devoid of artistic merit.

Hary And Max is most definitely the exception that proves that there are hardly ever any exceptions. Harry (Bryce Johnson), the "cute" member of a famous but dissolving boy band, comes home to visit his brother, Max (Cole WIlliams) whose pop idol star is starting to ascend. The brothers go on a camping trip together. That is pretty much all the introduction we get to the characters before we also find out that there is some quasi-sexual co-dependence between them. Pretty soon, actually almost immediately, this snowballs into revelations of Harry's liaisons with his 40 year old yoga teacher, of which Max is disturbed and jealous.

What follows is a stilted, under-developed, structureless exploration of the relationship of the brothers, their respective partners and their overbearing manager/mother. It is movies like these that encourage me to write. These characters interact like dolls being manipulated by five year old, or worse, like porn stars. Their actions are entirely unmotivated and when one character acts in a wildly inappropriate manner other characters react as if it was completely understandable.

Case in point: Max visits Harry's older lover. For some reason he undoes his pants, turns his back on the guy and says, "I want you to do to me what you did to Harry." To which the older guy says... "O.K." and they go for it. End of sub-plot. And this guy was a yoga teacher? He was about as spiritual as my ASS!

This film was one of the big controversies at Sundance becasue of its frank take on incest. What the promoters call "frank", I call unexplored. The issue was basically treated as if it were a non-issue. The harshest any character spoke out against the relationship between the brothers was to say, "What you are doing is wrong!" That is about as deep as this film delved into the brothers' attraction.

I am all for exploring homosexual incest. I am sure there are many interesting, involving and possibly even moving stories that could be told but this isn't one of them. We never found out how the incest originated or how the characters felt about doing it or the stigma that was attached to it.

All I can say is, at least this union won't be producing any two headed love child because I really couldn't sit through a sequel.

Thoroughly not recommended!

Tags: movie review, gay, queer film