This film is: a) gross, definitely, à la the title; b) funny, sometimes; c) occasionally unforgettable: In one scene, a straight guy who everyone thinks is gay lets a guy pleasure him with fellatio while he simultaneously has phone sex with a girl, who orgasms when he does. Sick but hot, regardless of your persuasion.
Welcome to the naughty Breakfast Club for the gay set. It’s a dirty little number with moments of gross-out so gross you just have to laugh. With a nod to John Waters, Eating Out plays with worthy subject matter, though often botching it with superficiality that’s not funny enough. The film flirts with the phenomenon of heteros who hang with homos and heteros more homo than hetero. If the acting, script and directing were more on cue, Eating Out could have been a five-star meal.
The film relies on an endless stream of cutesy one-liners and inside jokes, such as, “When he’s around my heart beats like a trailer park husband,” and “If you’ve never tricked with a chick how do you know you pick dick,” and “Find the queerest guy at school and smoke his pole,” and so on and so forth.
An interesting love triangle quickly forms in which a straight guy falls for a “fag hag” — a girl who hates macho guys and surrounds herself with gay men, falling in love with a string of them, only to lament when they come out of the closet that they weren’t much inside to begin with. Unfortunately, her character is so annoying she’ll give you a headache. Trouble brews when a questionably straight guy pretends to be gay to get to the fag hag, whom he adores.
Right on is a party scene in which the men are effeminate and their wives are manly and they’re all wearing sandals, and the film’s twist on the “everything goes to hell” dinner party at the ending.
Slapstick and somewhat juvenile, this flick is no less a fun turn. It also solves the mystery of why so many women love gay men: As one of the film’s characters explains, “We’re puppies with dicks.”
Showing at the Main Art Theatre (118 N. Main St., Royal Oak; 248-263-2111).
Lisa M. Collins writes about film for Metro Times. Send comments to [email protected].
