GAY
FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM
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GAY
FILM REVIEWS BY MICHAEL D. KLEMM
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Make the Yuletide Gay TLA
Releasing, Director/Screenplay:
Starring:
Unrated, 89 minutes |
Home
For The Holidays
Director Rob Williams (3 Day Weekend) has given me an early holiday present; a Christmas movie that is blissfully free of crass commercialism, funny, and heartfelt without being sickeningly sweet. The film is called Make The Yuletide Gay and it is a charmer. |
 It's
the most wonderful time of the year. Olaf 'Gunn' Gunnunderson (Keith Jordan)
and Nathan Stanford (Adamo Ruggiero) are two cute young college students
in love. Both are about to go home for the holidays. Gunn heads home to
his loving Swedish parents in Wisconsin just as Nathan discovers that his
rich parents are going on a cruise instead of spending Christmas with him.
(His parents are cut from the same mold as the cold, self-centered mother
in Hal Ashby's 1971 Harold and Maude.) Hurt and lonely, Nathan decides
to travel to Wisconsin and surprise his beloved. |
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 Nathan
had assumed that Gunn was out to his parents but Gunn is experiencing the
fear common to a lot of young gay men and women. "Working on the LGBT Student
Council," Gunn says, "I have met kids whose red state religious parents
welcomed them with open arms and kids whose liberal parents cut them off
completely. They stopped speaking to them. Or worse. Much worse." Nathan,
understanding, remarks that even Cher didn't know what to do when Chastity
came out and "Come on, she's Cher!" Gunn is scared and says that
he couldn't take it if his parents stopped loving him. He will have a moment
of panic later when his father refers to Nathan as "that type." Gunn is
relieved when Dad explains "You know... those over-priveleged East Coast
types." And then adds, "But if you like him, I like him." |
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 Williams
is one of my favorite modern gay filmmakers. He has already proved in his
previous films (Long-Term
Relationship, Back
Soon and 3 Day
Weekend) that he is capable of writing sharp and realistic characters
and dialogue. He also has a great sense of humor and can mix comedy with
heartfelt drama in the same film. There is a heartbreaking scene between
our young lovers at the film's midpoint that almost had me reaching for
the kleenex box. It is, of course, a given that everything will work out
and there is a great, quirky and unexpected twist that saves the ending
from becoming maudlin. |
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 The
opening scenes are a bit on the broad side but the film hits and then settles
into its stride when Gunn arrives home. Mother (Kelly Keaton) seems a little
over the top at first but her bubbly personality soon grows on you. The
film really came to life - for me at least - when Derek Long (Socket,
3 Day Weekend) entered
the picture as Gunn's perpetually stoned father who grows pot in the basement.
He is a college professor who once fell asleep while giving a lecture. Long
doesn't overdo the stoner routine and he is deliciously deadpan and lovable
in the role. (I liked when he mistook a Sudoko puzzle for a Crossword and
asked "What's a nine letter word that ends with 4?") In one of my favorite
scenes, he is naked under his robe, which is flapping wide open, as he answers
the front door when a wide-eyed Nathan unexpectedly arrives. Talk about
meeting the in-laws! |
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 Some
of the comedy is predictable but it's still funny. When Gunn and Nathan
start to make out in the bedroom, you know that Mother is going
to walk in and there she is, on schedule, bearing laundry. Her feud with
Abby's mother is a bit forced but there is a great reference to The Hitchhiker's
Guide To The Galaxy in one of their catfights. There are many flashes
of deadpan off-the-wall humor comparable to another of my queer favorites,
Dorian Blues.
For example, Gunn tells his parents and Abby that he aced his Philosophy
final. "All we had to do was answer one question," he says, proud of himself.
"What was the question?" Abby asks. He replies: "Why?" and she says,
"Just curious." And he says "No, that was the question." His hilarious,
longwinded answer, by the way, would make a great monologue in a Beckett
play. |
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 I
had thought that Abby's character would be annoying but then she turned
out to be interesting when she sees her high school sweatheart with Nathan
and immediately realizes that they are boyfriends. She becomes a
good confidante for Nathan later, and I loved when they both embarrassed
Gunn by agreeing that his father is so hot! One thing that kept amusing
me was how Nathan, and later Abby, would mock the unstylish and "straight"
way that Gunn was dressing and wearing his hair so that his parents wouldn't
figure out that he was gay. (Sometimes I wonder if I am really queer because
I thought he looked better that way than when he was dressing fabulous.)
I loved the early scene where he sheds his gay identity and dresses "straight"
in a highway rest stop while getting cruised by a passing trucker. (Nathan
gets cruised by the same trucker in the same restroom a few scenes later.) |
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 I
can't help it, but I love gay comedies where the humor tackles other subjects
besides divas, clothes and showtunes. At one point the father is watching
an unseen Christmas cartoon on his computer (the music will be instantly
recognizable) and calls this the best thing about the holidays. He then
cracks up laughing and says, "Look, the kid with the blanket just got all
self righteous about the meaning of Christmas and made all the other kids
feel like crap!" and "The bald kid is pouting, I love it!" |
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 Make
The Yuletide Gay
is well directed and moves at a good clip. The music is well chosen (I especially
liked a slow, minor key jazz improv of "We Wish You A Very Christmas") and
the few transitional songs are not intrusive. The acting throughout, for
the most part, is very good. I found Nathan's parents to be a bit stiff
but they were supposed to be that way. It was great seeing Gates McFadden
(Star Trek: The Next Generation's Dr. Crusher) channel Desperate
Housewives' Bree Van de Kamp as Nathan's Mom, however briefy. Leave
the end credits on for a bit or you'll miss one last scene where they listen
to the message Nathan left on their answering machine. Our two young lovers
are sweet together and make a great couple. Younger viewers than me will
know that Adamo Ruggiero (Nathan) played a gay teenager in Degrassi:
The Next Generation. Usually young love stories make me roll my eyes
but not this one. I really liked these two guys and the two actors have
great chemistry together. Watch your heart melt when they hold hands under
a pillow at a neighbor's Christmas party. |
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More
on Rob Williams: Kelly
Keaton also appears in: Derek Long also
appears in: Steve Callahan
also appears in: Ian Buchanan
also appears in: |
And
so the comedy of errors begins. Gunn is out with a passion at college
(he is wearing a Human Rights Commission shirt in the first scene) but
he isn't out to his parents. Nathan finds this inexplicable but he agrees
to go along with the charade even as it annoys him when Gunn's parents,
Sven and Anya, keep pushing their son together with Abby, the girl next
door (whom he briefly dated in high school). Oblivious to the truth, Gunn's
parents welcome Nathan with open arms and the poor kid endures one unintended
double entrendre after another - like Mother noting that Gunn likes to
be on top when she shows them the bunk beds where they'll be sleeping.
Make
The Yuletide Gay
might not be White Christmas or It's A Wonderful Life, but
it's worthy holiday faire that is certainly lightyears better than the
three queer Christmas movies I've reviewed in the past. It's a great popcorn
movie to curl up on the coach with next to your lover. Better yet, make
it eggnog and some chestnuts roasting on an open fire.