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"In & Out": Gay, but not always funny
September 23, 1997
Web posted at: 12:39 a.m. EST (0539 GMT)From Movie Reviewer Paul Tatara
(CNN) -- Every few years a big-time Hollywood movie is released that purportedly deals "openly" with homosexuality. These movies usually turn out to be half-hearted soap-boxing at best and laughable shadow-boxing at worst.
The final result, more often than not, is something like 1982's "Making Love," in which a couple of gay characters have a quick smooch, then discreetly hug each other and sweat society's incomprehension for the next two hours.
"In & Out" movie clip. (Paramount Pictures)
2MB/49 sec. QuickTime movie
-- "In & Out" movie trailer --
(2 minutes, 26 seconds)
There's more actual gay undercurrents in repeats of "The Odd Couple."
"In & Out," a comedy that stars Kevin Kline as a beloved small-town school teacher who inadvertently gets outed by one of his former students during an Academy Award acceptance speech, will probably be given a lot more credit than it actually deserves for happily 'fessing up to the main character's carnal instincts. You know, citations for bravery and all that.
The great mistake that director Frank Oz and screenwriter Paul Rudnick make, however, is treating the material as a Norman Rockwell painting come to life, except that there's a limp-wristed guy who wears bow-ties and listens to Ethel Merman around the house. Targets this easy don't deserve an excess of applause.
Oz, who's a seasoned director but is best known as the brilliant puppeteer behind Miss Piggy and Fozzie Bear, directs cartoons. Not literally, mind you, but the tone he brings to most of his movies is glossy and light-hearted to the point that the whole thing seems to be taking place in somebody's barn loft clubhouse instead of in some "reality" that reflects our own lives. The Mars probe isn't this tied up in examining surfaces.
There's no sense whatsoever that we need to know anything about any of the characters in "In & Out" aside from their basic slack-jawed disposition towards Howard after he comes out of the closet. Even the music, which likes to go "VROOMP! Bump-bump-doodle," is straight out of Looney Tunes.
Rudnick's pretty obvious screenplay is saved by some enjoyable performances, but just barely. Some of you may be familiar with a monthly column in "Premiere" magazine that's written by a woman named Libby Gelman-Waxner. These columns are often hilarious, bitchy slaps at the middle-brow dispositions of most American film-goers (and filmmakers).
I've always enjoyed Gelman-Waxner, with her shopping obsessions and smirking remarks on the sexual allure of our biggest movie stars. Well, Gelman-Waxner is actually screenwriter Paul Rudnick writing under an assumed character.
The same kind of ditsy verbal humor drives "In & Out," but it's just plain unbelievable when coming out of actual people's mouths. The residents of the town are written just as stereotypically as Kline's character is.
Without fail, they're bumpkins who are unable to understand the realities of the world beyond their little lake and church steeple, but this is supposed to be a movie about how ridiculous it is that we perceive people stereotypically.
If no one in the film seems likely to surprise us with their reaction to the main premise, then there's no real friction, nothing that can generate any decent jokes. It's all Barbra Streisand obsessions and Kline teaching himself to walk "like a man." That is, when Rudnick isn't pursuing the absolute cheapest possible kind of verbal joke -- the "nervous situation" that makes a man blurt out what he doesn't want to say.
At one point, Kline, when he's under duress, actually says "homo-section" instead of "intersection." If there's a chance for a character to accidentally use "homo" as a prefix, or unexpectedly say "gay," Rudnick goes for it.
This device works in the opposite direction for Bob Newhart, as the high school principal who stammers endlessly when he tries to say "homosexual" and says "gonads" before a graduating class, instead of some other word that isn't even important enough to remember. Beavis and Butthead would love this.
Matt Dillon, who's around for about six minutes as the Oscar winner, also has a supermodel girlfriend (Shalom Harlow) who talks about having to vomit before the big fashion show. Har-har. It must've taken forever to write that one. Why not some overweight cops eating donuts? That would be a scream.
Kline (who will normally try to pull his pants over his head to get a laugh, but doesn't go ape the way I expected him to) is charming, and Tom Selleck, as a reporter who convinces the teacher to admit his true leanings, is also quite graceful.
These two have an unexpected moment that's the only real (as in believable) life in the "gay" story-line, and it's a lot of fun, but I'd rather not ruin it for you. Selleck, who seems more attuned to the small screen, has never been this appealing in a movie role before.
The real kick, though, lies in a wonderful comic performance by Joan Cusack as Kline's jilted bride. There are a couple of instances in which Cusack is belly-laugh funny, but manages to dig deeper and pull out some of the underlying sadness of the character.
One scene, when she piles into a local bar while wearing her wedding gown and tries to drown her sorrows in some vodka, is hilarious (she's a top-notch physical comic, probably the best in the movies on the feminine side of the equation).
Then the scene unexpectedly shifts gears into real heartbreak when she starts confessing that her sense of self is wrapped up in a man who had been lying to her throughout their three-year, sexless courtship.
I really think that Cusack should be nominated for best supporting actress for this one, and is ready to carry a movie on her own. Somebody should wise up and give her a shot. She's certainly smarter than this movie deserves.
"In & Out" is as innocuous as a comedy about sexual identity can be. No sex, nudity or violence. It looks and feels like a sitcom. Rated PG-13. 105 minutes.
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