Main cast: Mark Cirillo (Lewis), Scott Sell (Cooper), Blake Harrison (Belinda), and David Alanson (Berney)
Director: Mark Bessenger
Lewis and Cooper are best friends since forever. During Cooper’s bachelor party, he and Lewis decide to crash in their hotel room and watch porn together. If you think that this is like the set up for the most random gay porn ever, you’re right: perhaps due to alcohol or something, Cooper decides to slurp and munch on Lewis’s pee-pee, and there you go. He feels guilty, et cetera, but what is done can’t be undone. So these two decide to meet once a year, the anniversary of their newfound closeness in the same hotel room, to party. The Last Straight Man zooms in on selected evenings of their meet, to show me how their relationship changes over the years.
I know, poor Belinda and her kids – her husband loves the pee-pee and can’t stop the feeling. In fact, it’s quite amusing how this movie bucks stereotypes a bit. Normally, the straight-acting guy would be the top while the openly gay one will be the flagrantly effeminate type, but Cooper is the one who gets so into being the receiver that he becomes pretty much exclusively so as the story progresses. Lewis isn’t in love so much as he uses their once-a-year rendezvous as the inspiration for his romance novels.
For this talk-heavy movie to work, the conversations need to carry it to the finish line and well, director and scriptwriter Mark Bessenger has these two characters talk like they are reading out melodramatic excerpts of an earnest fanfiction. Even the occasional glimmers of self awareness from Lewis about how melodramatic and maudlin they can be can’t save him and Cooper from coming off as stilted, artificial creations rather than characters in their own right. Also, these two men are so whiny and self absorbed, I can’t imagine them actually having any fun in bed. Whenever they are together, they spend more time going into hysterical theatrics about their own needs and how the other person isn’t meeting these needs.
There are a few amusing scenes here, such as Cooper’s bungled first time bottoming for Lewis, but all in all, this one is far more of a yawner than anything else.
Oh, and as for nudity, Mark Cirillo has no issues going full frontal a few times – and I appreciate the view, thank you – while the one time Scott Sell threatens to show anything on the front, it’s obvious that he’s wearing one of those sock thingies. Maybe he’s just shy.
The Last Straight Man aims to be some kind of quirky yet deep, introspective drama-comedy about how two men can feel such an intense bond that transcends boundaries of straightness, gay, whatever, but ultimately, the script lacks the depths and wit to pull it off.
