New York Times film reviewer A.O. Scott said there’s not a name yet for these movies on the Crash model, with multiple characters and story lines that intersect in expected/unexpected ways. Pretzel movies? Spaghetti movies? Or in this case, Ronde-a-lays?

The scene between the young cutie Ceth (pronounced Seth, played by Jay Brannan) and the guy who claims to be the Mayor of New York (sort-of-Ed-Koch-looking Alan Mandell) goes on way too long, as do a lot of the scenes at Shortbus, the sex club where the characters meet up. But Justin Bond as the “Madame” is hysterical; he makes every line he says sound funnier than it should be. I wish I’d seen Kiki and Herb when it was on Broadway recently. “Shortbus” is for the little bus that the “special needs” kids took to school. We’re all bozos on this shortbus.

So the movie’s also about voyeurism. On her first visit to the Shortbus club, Creamy (Stephen Kent Jusick) says to Sofia, “voyeurism is participation.” This sounds like Mitchell’s comment on, and to, the audience for this film. Does he mean it as a criticism, i.e. have we all become voyeurs who need ever-more-shocking things on screen (sex, violence, etc.) to be titillated? Or is voyeurism a step towards understanding? Discuss.

I’m getting a little tired of the dominatrix-who-can’t-connect and the former-street-hustler-who-can’t-feel-anything type of characters. Do you have to be a sex worker or have a traumatic past to have these kinds of problems? Doesn’t that distance audience members who may have similar issues from these characters, allowing us to make them more comfortably “other”?

Does Sofia ever have an orgasm? It sure looks like she does. How can she and Rob afford such a great apartment if he’s not working?

The three-way relationship with James, Jamie, and Ceth looks like fun, and the sex scenes are both funny and hot, but I’ll bet these things never work out well in real life.

For all the nakedness and sex I didn’t find this movie really erotic, exactly, but it was interesting. Would the characters be as interesting if we didn’t see them having sex? Are they defined solely by their sexual issues or are these issues really a window into who they are? I’d like to see Shortbus again to see if these people are really more than their penises and vaginas. I’d also like directions to the club.