Shoulder Dance **½ (2023, Matt Dallas, Taylor Frey, Maggie Geha, Rick Cosnett, Samuel Larsen) – Classic Movie Review 12,758

Matt Dallas was born on October 21, 1982.

The 2023 film Shoulder Dance is ‘A romantic comedy about the messy business of friendship, love and sex.’ It is ideally cast with attractive actors Matt Dallas, Taylor Frey, Maggie Geha and Rick Cosnett.

‘A romantic comedy about the messy business of friendship, love and sex.’

Writer/ director Jay Arnold’s 2023 film Shoulder Dance is ideally cast with attractive actors, whose energised and effective performances largely overcome a tricky script with unlikeable, unsympathetic, stereotypical characters. It’s a gay male film, but ironically the most sympathetic character of the four (maybe five) principals is the only woman of the group.

The film’s in the interesting, watchable category, though it does take a while to accept this largely unappealing bunch of people into your head, and, as the self-proclaimed ‘romantic comedy’, it is hardly romantic or funny most of the way, though towards the end that does kick in. The long takes and big close-ups test the actors’ skill, but they are really up for it and give it their all.

One-time high school best friends Ira (Matt Dallas) and Roger (Rick Cosnett) haven’t seen each other in 24 years. When the straight Roger arrives unexpectedly with his partner Lilly (Maggie Geha) at Ira’s clinically clean Hamptons house for the weekend, their long suppressed desires resurface. Roger has apparently led the straight life since his college days, and rich uptight artists’ agent Ira is living quite the gay life with his very gay campy sweet partner, the 35-year-old Josh (Taylor Frey), whose bestie is the outrageous Shawn (Samuel Larsen).

In a talky screenplay that plays like a gay spin on Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, the guest Roger wants to hump the host, and the host wants to resist. A wild weekend of seductive games, indulgence and revelations is fuelled by copious amounts of alcohol and drugs, severely testing the strength of Ira’s 10-year long-term relationship with Josh, who comes over as a rather sad and clingy, almost desperate, ageing toy boy. The much more confident, older Ira and Roger come across as desperately cynical, selfish and self-centred. They will have their way whatever.

The bitter-sweet happy ending works but it feels contrived, like one or two of the other plot devices. The script, though not really witty enough, is quite sharp with some strong, sometimes clever dialogue, and quite good in its efforts to examine those endless conundrums of friendship, love and sex.

American actor Matthew Joseph “Matt” Dallas was born on October 21, 1982 and is best known for playing the title character on the ABC Family series Kyle XY.

Dallas was outed by Perez Hilton on his gossip website and on The Howard Stern Show. On July 5, 2015, Dallas married male musician Blue Hamilton. On December 22, 2015, Dallas and Hamilton announced on their YouTube channel that they had adopted a two year-old son Crow. On July 16, 2022, via YouTube, they announced they had adopted their second child, Rosa.

© Derek Winnert 2023 – Classic Movie Review 12,758

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