Love Or Whatever

My first movie in Johannesburg 'Out In Africa' film festival and I was so excited watching this with my new friends. I had my inhibitions for watching an American gay film in theatre because lets face it, US gay themed films have disappointed us much more than they have made us happy. This film thankfully did not fall in the former category. If, the film did not make me cringe and I didn't realize how soon the movie ended, I would say that the film did a pretty decent job of keeping the audience's attention.

Corey, soon to be 30, has a successful career as a psychiatrist and lives with his boyfriend Jon. The night Corey is about to propose to him, Jon finds out and freaks out completely. To the extent hat he ends up sleeping with a woman, who happens to be Corey's patient. He comes back home to tell Corey that he might be bi and Corey completely flips out. They break-up. Corey's sister, Kelsey, moves in. She is lesbian and runs a neighborhood coffee shop where queer community can be themselves. She introduces Corey to the world of Grindr, where he finds Pete, who delivered him pizza twice. They go on couple of dates but Jon re-enters Corey's life. But it is pure physical pleasure for both of them. Corey is going through emotional turmoil. He fails to see the true love that Pete has for him because he is not very confident about himself. Meanwhile, Kelsey is having award time keeping the cafe safe, since she is losing money but she gets no help from Corey. Finally sense prevails and Corey realizes all the mistakes he has been doing of sleeping with an ex, not recognizing love when it finally knocks your door and helping out his lovely sister. He amends his mistakes and takes some hard but life-changing decisions that are good for him and people around him.

The best thing about this movie was that everyone who sees it will be able to identify with something or the other in the film. The feelings of all the characters have been nicely captured. We see Corey in love, gets his heart-broken, the excitement of finding love again, precious moments with his sister and he does a pretty well job of it. The films beginning was a little cheesy with the lovers playing out their fantasy but ultimately it was ok when it dealt on the real subject. The film thankfully doesn't stereotype anything, even when Corey screams surprised why someone so hot like Pete would be interested in Corey. Apparently hot or not, everyone ultimately is looking for love or whatever. Everyone else acted pretty well too. Kelsey provides enough reasons to laugh in the film. She was my favorite, slightly over the top, but it worked for the film. Jon was total eye candy with muscle body and good looks. Pete was the right combination of sensual looks and guy next door attitude.

As I said before, I went with very low expectations and was actually quite pleasantly surprised with the final product. Not bad at all. (6.5/10)