Poster Boy (2004)

Pretty Good

This is a must-see and one of the best documentaries - and films - of this year.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

So, the hand cam got on my nerves rather quickly.Spent the first part of the movie trying to figure out what kind of film I was watching. The film is obviously set up to be a "worlds collide" situation. Perhaps I was expecting that those 2 worlds, or their separateness, would have been better defined from the beginning.The whole project comes off like an amateur attempt judging by the lack of polish. The lighting is crap. The camera work is distracting. The casting is good. The dialogue is effective but the plot jumped around too much for me to follow. Makes me feel like I have A.D.D.The technical flaws kept me out of the film and I was left with an overpowering sense of watching a film rather than experiencing it.

Talk about misrepresentation! This movie misses on so many marks that I honestly feel sorry for those involved. The acting, editing, cinematography, "costumes", etc. YIKES! What really got my goat was the thorough incoherence of the "story". The movie's called Poster Boy and the main character bitches and moans about how he's "not the perfect son" but his big problem is giving a single phoney speech! If the movie had been about his parents grooming him to be a politico and forcing various women on him it might've made sense. But when he's a nobody at some second-tier university an they're trying to hide him how is he a Poster Boy living a lie. He mentions on several occasions how he's invisible. Boo Hoo. And what's with the political implausibility? The devil from South Carolina who's in office and running for re-election in New York? I don't think so. Oh, and how about the fact every character smokes constantly in totally inappropriate locales. I suppose this was to make them "interesting". Bleh. Of all the bad acting Izzy has to be the worst. Is she doing an impression of Ally Sheedy in Breakfast Club or what? The two gay characters which were supposedly the selling point of this fiasco have about as much sizzle as a glass of water. All in all, another sad contribution to the canon of horrible gay films. I was bamboozled by another wretched NetFlix suggestion! The end.

I felt the script for the movie was lacking a sense of reality most of the time. There were to many lines that were total Cliché's. For example, when the small group was planning a protest the one girl suggested. "why done we form a human chain around the auditorium and confront the senator with Poetry". There were 5 of them, and the suggestion was Laughable, and no one laughed in the scene. There's a lot of lines like that but not funny, just out of context.The acting on the other hand was quite good. Even with the lines they were given.I have to say i'm not a great fan of constant close ups which this had tons of. I it was hard to tell what was going on around the characters since there were so many close ups.

I wrote a review of Poster Boy on my website (www.BadGayFilms.com) and you'll be surprised that me big issues with this movie aren't found in the gay plot lines (it was pretty typical of most gay films.) Here is some of what I had to say, be sure to check out the website for my full review:"...oddly enough my issues with this movie don't really come from the gay elements. For the most part the gay plot lines are pretty reasonable and believable though not very compelling. I'm only talking about the plot here mind you. The camera work will make you dizzy and the editing is sloppy. The actors do a decent job for the most part (Matt Newton as Henry Kray and Jack Noseworthy as Anthony) with some glaring exceptions (oddly enough Karen Allen as Eunice Kray and Ian Reed Kesler as Skip Franklin are pretty awful.)My true problem with this film is the very basis for which it is based. The whole plot centers on a political campaign and while most movies that attempt to portray a campaign tend to stumble, this one falls flat on its face."BadGayFilms.com