Pictured From Adam ( Craig Chester ) and Steve ( Malcom Gets ) .
In tried and true romantic comedy form, Adam & Steve begins with a flashback. It's 1987 and Adam ( Craig Chester ) , a double for The Cure's Robert Smith, and his hefty gal pal Rhonda ( Parker Posey ) wander into Manhattan's Danceteria thinking its Goth night. It's not, but seeing the fetching Steve ( Malcom Gets ) , dressed only in a skimpy loin cloth, up on stage leading his dance troupe in a typical 'I Eat Cannibals' style number, they decide to stay. After a tentative meeting, a nightmarish one-night stand between the two men involving lots of cocaine cut with baby laxative follows.
We then flash forward 17 years later where the duo will meet again, not remember each other until much later in the picture, and become involved in a relationship that, like the movie, proceeds in fits and starts. Adam has become a recovering drug addict, Steve a psychiatrist/counselor. Both are now in their mid-30s and neither has found a satisfying relationship. Not that golden boy Steve with the gym bunny body is particularly searching either—he's more than happy trysting away at the health club showers or at the baths while the mournful, pessimistic Steve, with the dark circles under the eyes, is like a walking case of anxiety who seems to walk around with a 'Victim' sign taped to his forehead.
Somehow—and it's never quite clear just how—these two hit it off and start dating. What ensues is a sort of cross between the mid-'90s gay comedy Jeffrey and The Way We Were. In this version Steve is light WASP Robert Redford to Adam's dark Jewish Barbra Streisand. Nothing seems to suggest that Adam and Steve really belong together but somehow the relationship, like the film, keeps bumping along and after a while, the clunky rhythms have a cumulative effect and you start rooting for the mismatched pair.
The odd coupling is helped by Rhonda, now slimmed down and doing stand-up comedy and hindered by Steve's oddball friend, Michael ( Chris Kattan ) , who plays … well Chris Kattan. Once these two hook up ( in a funny scene over a shared bong and an evening of American Movie Classics on TV ) , their characters, annoying up to that point, are fleshed out and actually their romance in some ways becomes more interesting than the one between the two leads. Maybe because instead of seeing Adam and Steve in those little unusual moments, we see the usual stuff—like those standard set pieces where each meets the other's parents. Steve's mother ( played by Melinda Dillon ) and his father are disapproving uptight conservatives while Adam's ( played by Julie Haggerty and Paul Sand ) are Jewish, accepting and sweet but are described as 'unlucky' and seen to be so in a scene that is so over the top as to be cartoonish. These familiar actors aren't really given much to do, however, and could have used some help from the writing department.
All this before either Adam or Steve has the 'aha!' moment when they realize they met back in the 1987 that fateful night at Danceteria ( which actually closed in 1986—but let's not quibble ) and suddenly the relationship is in crisis. Next, also in typical romantic comedy fashion, come scenes of the lovers apart, trying valiantly to put their lives back together with the aid of their friends, until a slam-bang, physical comedy finish ( this one taking place at Steve's two-step class ) .
Out writer/director Craig Chester is best known to GLBT audiences for 1992's Swoon, which delved deeply into the gay relationship between murderers Leopold & Loeb, so this return to queer cinema with a gentle, loopy romantic comedy is a decided change of pace. And though the film is diverting and has its share of laugh-out-loud moments ( Chester has a gift for those acidic Neil Simon one-liners and the luck to have Posey and Kattan spouting them ) , the freshest thing about it is that it focuses on two 30-something gay men as opposed to the typical youngsters these romantic comedies ( gay and straight ) usually focus on.
But what I loved most about Adam & Steve is that throughout the course of the courtship between the gloomy Gus and the perky prancing pony there are lots and lots of kisses—passionate ones, swift ones, Honey I'm Home ones, Going Out To Get The Paper ones. Lots and lots of every sort of kiss—just like those any gay ( or lesbian ) couple would engage in. Although Chester puts in some of these kisses to inject a comedic plot device ( Adam & Steve are 'hilariously' gay bashed each time they pucker up in public ) , all those kisses pointed out something I found very interesting. In every single film I've seen in which straight actors have played gay ( including Brokeback Mountain ) , not one has shown the intimacy of one of those I'm Kissing You Without Thinking About It kisses like this movie does. Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin didn't have it in Making Love, neither did Steven Weber and Michael T. Weiss in Jeffrey, and for all the hoopla, neither did Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal in Brokeback Mountain. There's always been that little nagging voice in my head saying, 'This isn't how real gay men in love behave. They kiss and touch a LOT more than this and I oughta know.'
Is it different in this movie because the two leads are played by two openly gay actors and are completely at ease with the physical intimacy and probably did it without thinking about it? That would be my guess—and boy is it a pleasure to watch this instinctive chemistry happen. It's the same kind of thing you see in the best straight romantic comedies. The camera turns and the thing happens. It certainly gives Adam & Steve an extra dimension—and makes its claim of being 'a tempting gay romantic comedy' an example of truth in advertising.
Opens this Friday at the Landmark Century Centre Cinema. www.landmarktheatres.com
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