Main cast: David Sutcliffe (Dean Seagrave), Celina Font (Sofia), Antonio Sabato Jr (Pablo Alesandro), Jennifer Coolidge (Louise), Leonardo Brzezicki (Marcos), and Sonia Braga (Pablo’s Mother)
Director: David Moreton
Testosterone is a really bad movie. The acting is actually pretty good apart from the predictable exception from one Antonio Sabato Jr. It’s the script that’s a self-indulgent mess that fails to shed any insight into the psyche of the main characters, leaving me ultimately to feel frustrated with the movie.
Our hero Dean Seagrave is an illustrator-writer who is under severe pressure to come up with a follow-up to his successful illustrated comic I Was a Teenage Speed Freak. Ignoring his editor Louise’s calls, however, Dean decides to take off to Argentina in pursuit of his lover Pablo Alesandro who one day went out to get some cigarettes and never came back. Dean’s adventures soon had him dealing with Pablo’s less-than-welcoming mother, a mysterious waitress named Sofia, and an earnest but rather disquieting fan named Marcos. To call this movie a strictly gay one is not quite accurate since Pablo and even Dean display bisexual inclinations when it comes to their attraction to the people around them, but it is however very clear – and trust me, it is as clear as Antonio Sabato Jr’s full frontal nudity in this movie – that Dean and Pablo were lovers.
David Sutcliffe is always a reliable and watchable actor and I don’t know why he’s not getting better roles in movies. Maybe he should call up Mark Ruffalo for advice. Come to think of it, if it’s Mr Ruffalo who’s playing Pablo in this movie, Testosterone may just be a better baby because Antonio Sabato Jr is a very wooden actor that’s painful to watch. His love scene with Mr Sutcliffe has zero chemistry and his attempt at speaking like a native Argentinian highborn aristocrat is laughable. Sonia Braga has nothing much to do here than to act like the wicked witch from Dean’s personal Snow White story. I end up thinking that Dean has better chemistry with both Sofia and Marcos, and would rather see Dean fall in love with Marcos instead of continuously obsessing over the inanimate beefcake that is Pablo.
As the plot becomes more and more convoluted and even incoherent as it builds up to ridiculously far-fetched proportions, Dean’s actions and motivations become more opaque and confusing. Dean is a self-absorbed and sulky protagonist that I can still empathize with at the start. After all, when the person you believe is your other half and your true love just walks out and doesn’t come back, as if he doesn’t care anymore, I’m sure you’ll spend some time feeling sorry for yourself and wondering why and how things went wrong too. But Dean starts acting more and more outlandish as the story progresses. Like everything about this movie, Dean turns into a complete “WTF?” moment for me.
I don’t want to reveal the twist at the end, so let me just say that the twist is a convenient way to justify the way the movie spirals out of control in an over the top and ridiculous manner as it moves past the half hour mark. But the twist leaves me feeling cheated, like someone who has dropped an iron ball onto my car until I nearly die of a heart attack before telling me that he’s just joking and I shouldn’t take things so seriously. Sure, he finds that funny like Mr Moreton (who wrote the script along with David Hensley) must think his movie is so funny, but I beg to differ. Sitting through this incomprehensible mess of a movie is no laughing matter, not when my head starts to pound from the increasingly ridiculous turns the movie keep taking.
So, why should you watch this movie, you ask? I can only think of two reasons. One, you like to see the pretty that is David Sutcliffe and it is reasonable to sit through this movie to admire his bare behind since he rarely gets to be on TV or the big screen. Two, you want to see Antonio Sabato Jr’s penis. Anyone else, proceed with caution. Those looking for a good noirish film with hot leading guys, don’t wait – flee for dear life now!
