Those looking for a sensitive and honest look at the problems of homophobia and repression are not advised to look to Hollywood, as the film industry there is less than renowned these days for its profound insights into real societal truths. The above is doubly true for comedies, which, for better or worse, more often than not bypass thought about issues they raise in favor of cheap sight gags; it is a fact of a life, at least of life in Hollywood, and denouncing it amounts to words in the multibillion-dollar-a-year wind.
The problems with the recent comedy "In and Out" are legion, but the failure to treat the issues as real issues is primary about them. Kevin Kline depicts a teacher inadvertently outed by a former student in the course of the student's accepting an Academy Award; suddenly, all eyes are on Kline and his mannerisms and tasts, as people speculate on whether he is or isn't gay. The ever-so-subtle point is to mock the way stereotypes of gay people--gay men, here--are elevated to truth, and how Kline's character can "prove" that he isn't gay by conforming. The movie derives much of its "humor" from making fun of the dumb-as- doorknobs small-town Midwesterners and their silly beliefs, their prejudices, their shallowness in thinking that a walk or an appreciation for Barbra Streisand is a reliable indication of homosexuality--in short, it resorts to stereotypes, silly and outdated ones at that. Screenwriter Paul Rudnick and director Frank Oz were apparently unappreciative of this irony, but your reviewer found it a tad irritating. More to the point, where homophobia is prevalent, there's a lot more to it than disdain for Barbra Streisand, and what passes for it here-- misunderstanding that magically melts away by the end of the film--sugarcoats the conflicts that go on in real life.
The characters in "In and Out" would need a lot of development to qualify as cardboard. We learn nothing of Kline's real thoughts or feelings; even after the pivotal scene, at his wedding, we learn nothing about what has been going on in his mind. Kline's role is to play straight man for a host of caricatured characters, from his mother ("I want a wedding, Howard") to Tom Selleck as an unethical journalist to Bob Newhart as a squeamish school principal to Matt Dillon as the self-centered Gen-X student-turned-actor. Joan Cusack as the fiancee has little to do until the aborted wedding, at which point she plays abandoned bridge in such an over-the-top fashion that the character becomes, like the rest, a running gag. (And not, if you ask this reviewer, an especially funny one. Ha ha--you've been left at the altar and are willing to sleep with anyone. Ha ha.) And Kline-- well, he does his physical humor well, as he always does, but a few moments of Kline trying to act manly are far from enough to save this film.
The astute reader objects that the real problem here is that your reviewer just didn't find the thing funny and hence didn't appreciate what are, in truth, standard devices for comedies. True (but wow, are these jokes unoriginal--that ol' chuckler about a model vomiting before a photo session, for instance)...true, your reviewer did not laugh once and has since been considering ways he could have better spent that $8.25. But most comedies don't set up the bulk of their humor around a real issue that actually affects people, and most movies that do that feel compelled to at least treat the subject with a measure of honesty. "In and Out" plays everything for laughs, down the confrontation between parents and a supposedly gay son--not, in the real world, a funny topic. Many of the funny moments are given away in the trailer, for those those that remain, well, perhaps your reviewer was nonplussed enough by the rest of the film that he wasn't up for a laugh.
In short, "In and Out" is a movie where the gags come cheap, very cheap, and the knowledge that closeted homosexuality actually matters in the world is best left at the door. Though the ending testifies to the good intentions at owkr, the treatment of the issues makes it all feel condescending at best.
Duncan Stevens d-stevens@nwu.edu 312-654-0280
The room is as you left it; your last touch-- A thoughtless pressure, knowing not itself As saintly--hallows now each simple thing, Hallows and glorifies, and glows between The dust's gray fingers, like a shielded light.
--from "Interim," by Edna St. Vincent Millay
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