What is it about sassy gay men that make them so hard to write as on-screen characters? It might work if they're sidekicks to the protagonist (and therefore taken in small doses) as in Kissing Jessica Stein or Will & Grace. But if one is the leading man of a movie, then you're spending two hours with a wannabe-Wilde who very quickly seems brittle, forced, condescending, and phony. It takes a very talented writer to make him likable and a very talented actor to let the wit roll off his tongue with panache.
Unfortunately, we have no such luck with Nathan, the leading man in writer/director Russell Brown's Race You to the Bottom. Brown seems to like the idea of writing a young, successful, unabashedly sexual man (scratch the above "gay" and make that "bisexual"), but Nathan is also narcissistic, inconsiderate, rude, and sexually inconsiderate. And if you're going to make him "sassy" or "witty" or whatever, then you better give him some good lines. That doesn't happen.
For a brief summary, Nathan (Cole Williams) and Maggie (Amber Benson) abandon their respective boyfriends to take a trip to Napa for an article he's working on for a travel magazine. As soon as they leave, they're making out! Sassy! I think we, the audience, are either supposed to be so shocked (rubbing our eyes in disbelief, "say wha...?") or cheering them on ("Yeah, you go, gay boy!" "Yeah, tap that sassy ass, straight girl!"). But all I could think was "Really? She's cheating on her supercute boyfriend with a greasy Clay Aiken clone wearing way too much eyeliner?"
Some people mistakenly believe that they have to "identify" with the protagonists in art. While I didn't mind that I couldn't identify with Nathan (he actually tells Maggie "the taste of another man on your lips makes me hot." Who talks like that?), I at least wanted to understand what was so attractive about him to Maggie. The movie offers few clues: He spontaneously dances in hotel rooms! He... um... likes to drink wine! He can get erections!
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