Main cast: Tanner Cohen (Doc) and Matthew Camp (Go)
Director: Cory Krueckeberg
Getting Go, the Go Doc Project is a low budget indie film with only two principal actors in the cast. Despite the cheapness of the whole thing, the movie has a very intimate and raw vibe to the whole thing that can cut into the heart.
In this coming of age flick, we meet Doc, a nerdy, virginal young lad who lives more on social media than in real life. He is obsessed with Go, a go-go dancer, and, in this movie, he decides to approach Go under the pretense of filming a reality TV show about the lives of strippers and such. Eventually, the two men become intimate and Doc, perhaps predictably, gets even more tangled up in his feelings for that man. However, things may come to a halt once their dirty laundry comes out. Will there be a happy ending for these two?
Well, yes, in a sense – they remain friends, but they end up going separate ways.
Matthew Camp, who is a go go dancer in real life, obligingly shows skin and shakes what his mother gave him in this one, but I actually think Tanner Cohen is a more attractive cast member – he’s cute in a nerdy-boyish way, his smile is really nice to look at, and his physique feels more ‘real’ than the chiseled perfection of Mr Camp. What makes this movie works very well is the easy, convincing chemistry between these two men, even when they are mouthing long and stilted lines that feel more at home in college rallies than casual conversation. Even the simple act of one of them resting his head on the other person’s shoulder can make me smile, because these two really seem to like one another’s company. Go relaxes and becomes a more likable person, even boyish, in Doc’s company, and I find myself thinking that, perhaps, what these two have may be real after all.
This one makes a pretty sweet and frequently bittersweet love story, and the dead-on use of songs such as Patrick Wolf’s Overture and Jordan Klassen’s The Horses Are Stuck only increases the impact of the more intimate or vulnerable scenes, driving the blade deeper into the heart of the audience.
My only complaint is the last fifteen minutes or so of the movie, which just drag on unnecessarily to drive home a message about keeping it real and being true to oneself. Even then, Doc’s preachy message is hilariously inconsistent. By filming those moments with Go, he is being unnecessarily cruel in his need to capture and show off every aspect of his own epiphany. Even as he accuses Go of narcissism, he is indulging in his own brand of narcissism. Therefore, I just have to question just how much of Doc’s epiphany is sincere and how much of it is literally for show.
Still, for a long time, this is a sweet kind of romantic drama that delivers both bitter and sweet in unexpectedly effective ways. Oh, and all those pretty male flesh on display doesn’t hurt either. Were not for the descent into tedious and even pretentious maudlin moments in its final moments, this movie would have been the perfect kind of heartbreak film.
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