Almost Normal (2005)

Excellent, Without a doubt!!

everything you have heard about this movie is true.

This movie was so-so. It had it's moments, but wasn't the greatest.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

Picture this: Unhappily single gay professor Brad Jenkins (J. Andrew Keitsch) is approaching the big 4-0 and is going through some serious inner self-evaluation. He is not only single, but also lonely. His best friend Julie (Joan Lauckner), who married his brother, convinces him to attend his parents' wedding anniversary. After a bad night, Brad gets drunk and wounds up in a car accident. When he wakes up, he finds himself back in high school as a young man. However, the big shocker is this: homosexuality is the 'normal' way of living. To solve reproduction, parental partners are set up, otherwise it's all guy with guy, gal with gal.At first Brad finds himself in heaven, and makes his ultimate teen dream come true by dating Roland (Tim Hammer). However, after meeting the unsuspecting young Julie, Brad finds himself more attracted to her. The two soon start to have an affair and thus become "breeders", that is a heterosexual couple, subject to discrimination.This latter part is what I personally found a tad problematic. The movie implies that homosexual chose their sexual orientation rather than being born that way. Up until Brad and Julie's affair, I thought this was an excellent movie that showed what it is like to be the minority all of a sudden; it had great potential to grasp the audience, regardless of their sexuality. The sudden heterosexual twist came as an unpleasant surprise for me, as I found the storyline could have been much more interesting if it would have focused on Brad's homosexuality and how his experiences from the 'past' could change him when he went 'back to the future'.It was also startling to watch the Blue Jean Ball scene when all of a sudden heterosexual couples formed even though moments earlier most of them were convinced that being gay was the only way. It just didn't make sense and from then on it was hard to take the movie seriously.Then of course, in the end Brad does meet his love, Roland, when they go hiking as 40-year-olds. I was unsure about this movie's message. Did it mean to say that gender is insignificant when it comes to finding true love? Or that who we are attracted to solely depends on our environment? Perhaps that we are mere products of our environment? It is unclear.Overall this was definitely an interesting movie to watch, as it showed a new take on homosexuality, and (at least for the first half) provided a unique way of portraying an if-you-were-in-my-shoes situation. The fact that it was a low budget production cannot be overlooked, nonetheless it is worth a watch. Maybe someone can decipher the message.

This is such an annoying movie! Maybe there is an audience for it somewhere, but I'm glad I don't know anybody in it.It pretends to invert the gay/straight imbalance, but it does it so unevenly that it ends up alienating gays even more than we are already. The most annoying inequity: the ONLY sex scene, and the ONLY serious kissing (with tongues, open mouths and credible passion), are between straight couples, although in the world being shown gay is the norm and straight is taboo. The kissing between same-sex couples looks like me kissing my grandmother, every time it happens, and it happens a lot because that's how the movie drives home its insufferably heavy-handed message.If in a world dominated by people like me (i. e., gay people), the only ones who have good sex and the only ones who are passionately attracted to each other are the straight minority, no wonder the star switches teams so easily and eagerly. The preposterous, predictable ending, which I suppose was meant to surprise and delight us, to force a smile onto our faces and a tear into our eyes as we left the theatre, just made me angrier.I don't care what point this obnoxious movie was trying to make; I HATED it.

Marc Moody has written and directed a film that is so earnest and reaches so high for making a significant statement that it is difficult not to admire the result. ALMOST NORMAL is so obviously a gay version of 'Back to the Future' by its own admission that it becomes a bit tedious and silly, and when accompanied by low budget and tenuous production values it is a little squeaky in achieving its self-imposed high standards, it comes very close to being a forgettable effort. So why is it so popular? It has spirit! Brad (J. Andrew Keitch in a fine film debut) is a 40-year-old closeted gay college professor in Nebraska who lives in fear of derision and is frustrated he is unable to live his life in a happy relationship. His good friend Julie (Joan Lauckner) is supportive and encourages Brad to return home for his parent's wedding anniversary. Brad does so reluctantly, finds the usual homophobic atmosphere and in a moment of weakness, drinks too much and has an auto accident. Miraculously, when he awakens, he has the appearance of a handsome high school kid and when he wanders into the world he discovers that there has been a major reversal: now it is normal to be gay and grossly distasteful to be a straight breeder. Even his parents are gay with breeder hosts for procreation purposes. Brad sees reverse discrimination now, is sought after by the high school jock Roland (Tim Hammer), enjoys the freedom of being openly gay, but meets the now new Julie and is strangely attracted to her, having to hide his new 'straight alliance' in a new closet. And the resolution of this new dilemma is the message of the film.Everything about the idea of the film makes the viewer want to love it, and it is a sweet little diversion of a film with some thinking material about prejudices. It is rough and hampered by many technical and casting and scripted errors, but it does give newcomer Marc Moody a strong grounding for making further films about gay life that seem to appear like seeds of ideas throughout this film. It needs polish but it is a good time and offers a wide audience a better perspective on what it feels like to live a life as an outsider. Grady Harp

This review contains extreme "spoilers". Some reviewers of this film have misinterpreted the writer's vision. Ostensibly a standard gay comedy, Almost Normal would be rather forgettable, if it wasn't also a social satire, designed to illustrate what it's like to be gay in a straight world. As satire, it succeeds very well, and in some ways as brilliantly as one could hope to expect. In spots, the plot is too confusing to produce the intended impact, but I give it an A for effort.Brad is nice-looking, single, gay, on the cusp of his 40th birthday, and somewhat discontent. He ogles sports jocks when they're not looking, goes on dates with guys who are miles below his desirability level, and frequently argues with his best friend Julie, who is also his sister-in-law. At a party for his parents' 45th wedding anniversary, things have just about hit the boiling point. A reunion with his best high school buddy reminds him that his friend stopped talking to him when he came out. His mother still dreams that he'll find some nice girl, and as he remarks to Julie, sometimes he just wishes that he was "normal". Not that he dislikes being gay, but he is weary of being different from the heterosexuals that surrounded him. As a gay man, I found it easy to identify with this sentiment.Events at the party annoy him so much that he gets drunk, even though he recently gave up alcohol. Seeking some fun, he slips out of the party and drives to a local gay cruising area, where he crashes his car into a tree. As we suspect (and our suspicions are confirmed much later in the film) much of the remainder of the film is a dream sequence that plays in his mind while he lies unconscious in a hospital. And what a dream! Brad dreams that when he wakes the next morning, something unexplainable has happened. He has traveled back in time to the 1970's, and is now an 18 year old high school student. But that's not all. He has gotten his wish to be "normal" because everyone in the world is gay! Except, of course, those outcasts who are emotionally and physically attracted to members of the opposite sex. Known pejoratively as "breeders" and "hole-punchers", heterosexuals in Brad's dream world are routinely ostracized, scorned and even "straight bashed". They are preached against, misunderstood, and subjected to extreme ignorance and isolation. Pardon my gloating, but as a gay man, I found this a most delicious and righteous turn-about on reality.It was also highly satisfying to see a world where gay people are totally free, and stand proudly with their chosen partners before the entire world. In Brad's dream, there is no such thing as homophobia, and for a wonderful moment I allowed myself to be caught up in this glorious if absurd fantasy. Conversely, I can only imagine what it must be like for a straight person to absorb the basic premise of Brad's dream world – heterosexuals may find it strange, disjointing and probably fear-inducing. Homosexual propaganda? Yes! And highly effective.A myriad of plot problems are resolved with witty or sometimes silly explanations. In his dream, Brad's parents have same-sex partners, but his father and mother begat him through a custom known as "birth partners" where best friends of opposite sexes have children solely to reproduce, although romance and sexual desire between the sexes is taboo and "disgusting".Here's where Brad's dream gets dicey and somewhat confusing. Enter his sister-in-law, Julie. Although Brad has found his soul-mate, a basketball jock he had a crush on in High School in his "real" life, Brad slowly begins to realize that he is sexually attracted to Julie, and she to him. For a while, I was a bit uncomfortable with this plot twist, until I realized that the writer was cleverly engineering a take on the real-life terror, isolation, rejection and ultimate acceptance that virtually all gay people experience when they discover the truth of their own sexuality. Brad and Julie go to an underground "straight" bar, witness a violent "straight bashing" and ultimately attend their high school dance, where they demand acceptance. Many reviewers were confused by the dance scene. When Brad and Julie are denied permission to dance together ("We have to tolerate your kind, but we don't have to put up with your disgusting behavior") many of the on-looking gay couples (including some of the faculty) begin to dance with opposite sex partners, in a show of solidarity and tolerance. Some reviewers of this film thought that this signaled a reversal of Brad's fantasy dream, and that "everybody starts turning straight". Some even saw it as an argument that sexual orientation is a choice, but that's not what I got out of it – I saw it as a simple show of support for a persecuted minority.The "gay reversal argument" has been used before, but not quite so effectively. In "Torch Song Trilogy", Harvey Fierstein begins an impassioned speech to his mother by saying, "Ma, imagine what it would be like if everyone around you was gay; every book, every magazine…" and Anne Bancroft, replies, "You're talking crazy!" Almost Normal expands this argument to its conclusion. Of course, no heterosexual can ever truly understand what it's like to be gay in a straight world. But in the end, I found much of this movie powerfully persuasive, and I wanted to round up all my straight friends and family and make them watch it. The final scenes reverted to standard gay comedy, but there was a nice romantic twist at the end I didn't see coming. That part I'll leave for you to discover, for I do recommend that you see it and decide for yourself. I left with a smile on my face and my head full of thought, and that's never a bad thing.