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Down Low
Falling right behind Fool's Parade as the second worst film of 2023, Get Low is a silly and snooze-worthy black comedy that features plot points as old as chestnuts and attempts to contemporize them by the fact that the central characters are gay.
Gary is a wealthy businessman and closeted homosexual who meets a gay masseur named Cameron who, upon learning that he will be Gary's guide into the world of homosexuality. Cameron goes on a gay app and finds someone who he thinks will be appropriate for Gary and gets the guy come over, but through some bizarre circumstances, ends up dead. Cameron decides the solution to their problem is to go back to the app, where he finds someone else on the site whose profile implies that he enjoys sex with corpses, so he invites him over too.
Screenwriters Phoebe Fisher and Lukas Gage, who plays Cameron, seem to be some sort of show-biz oriented Will & Grace who have come up with this, what seems to be, on the surface, a black comedy and believe the lack of imagination in the scripting is easy to overlook thanks to gay characters speaking frankly and participating in gay sexual situations. I did like the fact that Gary was married with two children when his family found out about him and left him. Another layer was added to the character we didn't see coming when it's revealed he has an inoperable brain tumor, which seemed to be superfluous initially but it does work its way back into the story leading to an absolutely ridiculous finale
There's so much old school scripting going on here. The scenes with Gary trying to hide the body while Cameron dealt with the drug-riddled neighbor played by Judith Light, reminded me of Samantha Stephens trying to hide stuff from Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched and the scene where Cameron decides that Gary needs a makeover just screamed Cher and Dionne making over Tye in Clueless. There's also a disco fantasy sequence with Gary and Cameron that came off like a bad drag show that just seemed to pad running time.
Zachary Quinto is just way too an intelligent a screen presence for the role of Gary, but I guess this was his way of coming out, career wise, which wasn't really necessary, but he certainly could have found a better vehicle than this one. it's no surprise that Gage was a perfect fit for a role he wrote for himself and Simon Rex, who was so good last year in Red Rocket, works hard as the corpse lover, but this movie is such a mess nobody really comes off that great and the last ten minutes are beyond ridiculous.
Falling right behind Fool's Parade as the second worst film of 2023, Get Low is a silly and snooze-worthy black comedy that features plot points as old as chestnuts and attempts to contemporize them by the fact that the central characters are gay.
Gary is a wealthy businessman and closeted homosexual who meets a gay masseur named Cameron who, upon learning that he will be Gary's guide into the world of homosexuality. Cameron goes on a gay app and finds someone who he thinks will be appropriate for Gary and gets the guy come over, but through some bizarre circumstances, ends up dead. Cameron decides the solution to their problem is to go back to the app, where he finds someone else on the site whose profile implies that he enjoys sex with corpses, so he invites him over too.
Screenwriters Phoebe Fisher and Lukas Gage, who plays Cameron, seem to be some sort of show-biz oriented Will & Grace who have come up with this, what seems to be, on the surface, a black comedy and believe the lack of imagination in the scripting is easy to overlook thanks to gay characters speaking frankly and participating in gay sexual situations. I did like the fact that Gary was married with two children when his family found out about him and left him. Another layer was added to the character we didn't see coming when it's revealed he has an inoperable brain tumor, which seemed to be superfluous initially but it does work its way back into the story leading to an absolutely ridiculous finale
There's so much old school scripting going on here. The scenes with Gary trying to hide the body while Cameron dealt with the drug-riddled neighbor played by Judith Light, reminded me of Samantha Stephens trying to hide stuff from Gladys Kravitz on Bewitched and the scene where Cameron decides that Gary needs a makeover just screamed Cher and Dionne making over Tye in Clueless. There's also a disco fantasy sequence with Gary and Cameron that came off like a bad drag show that just seemed to pad running time.
Zachary Quinto is just way too an intelligent a screen presence for the role of Gary, but I guess this was his way of coming out, career wise, which wasn't really necessary, but he certainly could have found a better vehicle than this one. it's no surprise that Gage was a perfect fit for a role he wrote for himself and Simon Rex, who was so good last year in Red Rocket, works hard as the corpse lover, but this movie is such a mess nobody really comes off that great and the last ten minutes are beyond ridiculous.