To call The Casserole Club junk food would be an insult to Ding Dongs and McDonalds.
I invited my husband to watch it with me because he's a big fan of the period TV series Swingtown (R.I.P.) and Mad Men. He bowed out near the half-hour mark, just before everyone got naked for the first time.
The Casserole Club is more like Swingtown, which focused on free-loving couple-swapping without the distraction of people working at jobs to sustain their suburban lifestyle. Oh, maybe a round of golf at the country club while the men recharge their batteries...
There are five couples, all conveniently childless, who hang out together. The bored housewives decide to start a cooking competition, even though low-self-esteem Marybelle (Jennifer Grace) feels outclassed.
They display their wares at a party at the home of Sugar (Susan Traylor) and Conrad (Backstreet Boy Kevin Scott Richardson), an event that happens to take place on the day of Judy Garland's death (the weekend before Stonewall, for you LGBT historians out there).
There is lot of talking, a lot of drinking and a few party games—and suddenly the clothes come off and the orgy begins. We've already seen what a dick Conrad is (and he's into self-mutilation before it was cool), so it's no surprise when Sugar jumps the bones of Marybelle's husband, Max (Michael Maize), starting an affair that's apparently been waiting to happen.
It's not clear who else hooks up with whom, but everyone—including Marybelle, who has declared herself "not a sex person"—pairs off heterosexually (this time) and does what heterosexuals do.
At the next party, everyone is loosened up further by pot in cookies served as appetizers. The word is out and some additional guests have showed up, but church mouse Marjorie (Jane Wiedlin of the Go-Gos, who apparently bought herself a cameo) doesn't stay long.
This time Sugar gets it on with Jerome (Daniela Sea of The L Word) while Jerome's husband, Leslie (Mark Booker), watches from the shadows; meanwhile, Sterling (Garrett Swann) hits on Ned (Nic Roewert).
There's another party but the good times soon give way to suicide, jealousy, pregnancy, homophobia and anything else Frankie Krainz can cram into the script. News events are used to establish the period. Besides Garland's death there are the Manson murders and a rerun of the first moon walk.
Pastiche songs—cheaper than paying for rights, though some are close enough to the originals to spawn lawsuits—also set the period, though some sound like they're from about a decade earlier.
There are fleeting moments that seem insightful or genuine and some of the performers do a decent job, considering the dreadful material; but I won't identify them because I'm sure they'll want to delete this from their resumes.
Had it been made in 1969, like the nearly-as-dreadful-but-now-iconic Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice, The Casserole Club might have been passed off as a cautionary tale—Swapper Madness, if you will. More than 40 years of hindsight have added nothing to its perspective or freshness, although it may be intended as an expose of what today's tight-assed defenders of traditional marriage did in their younger days.
Directed by Steve Balderson, The Casserole Club is more likely to discourage movie-watching than promiscuity.
