The Last Straight Man *** (2014, Mark Cirillo, Scott Sell, David Alanson Bradberry) – Classic Movie Review 13,047

Mark Cirillo stars as Lewis, a closeted gay man throwing a bachelor party for his straight best friend and secret crush, Cooper (Scott Sell). But, after a night of drunken sex, they decide to meet in the same hotel suite on the same night each year.

Mark Cirillo stars as Lewis, a closeted gay man throwing a bachelor party for his straight best friend and secret crush, Cooper (Scott Sell), who is getting married in the morning. However, after a night of drunken sex – but no kissing, says Cooper – they decide to meet in the same hotel suite on the same night each year.

Over 12 years and four more depicted nights, the two grow, get a lot more facial hair, and older and wiser, and their loving friendship changes and matures, but stays strong. Lewis starts writing romantic novels. That’s what seems to keep him happy, sane and well off. Cooper has a wife, kids, a mortgage and a good job, but that’s not so good apparently.

Writer/ director Mark Bessenger’s 2014 film The Last Straight Man is a likeable, maybe slightly amateurish (in a good way), home-movie style romantic comedy drama, with a bit of fairly explicit sex and nudity thrown in. But it does start to grip, interest and involve increasingly as it goes along, and the actors and their characters get more compelling as time goes by. It ends up amusing, and quite sweet and wise, with everything ultimately good in the best of all possible worlds in the situation – a romance built on denial and deception.

Under fairly difficult and intimate circumstance, both actors are really rather good, after a few hesitations and wobbles early on, and certainly bold, brave and sympathetic. They share loving credible chemistry and make you believe an essentially fabricated situation, like Neil Simon’s Same Time Next Year. Almost the entire film is shot in the one hotel room with just the two characters, and it still isn’t boring! Bessenger’s screenplay is also really rather good, with plenty of home truths, heartbreak and witty banter packed in.

Genre: Comedy, Drama, Romance

Actors: Mark Cirillo, Scott Sell, David Alanson Bradberry, Benjamin Lutz, Blake Harrison, Brian Nolan, Marisa Serrano, Roy Green, Shane Fenske, Victoria De Mare.

© Derek Winnert 2024 – Classic Movie Review 13,047

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