an inadequate prelude

This past Sunday I saw Latter Days. It has 7.6/10 on IMDB, 77% RT community rating, and has won three indie film festival awards. It is the pinnacle of gay cinema.

But it is still awful.

The movie begins with an introduction to Christian, a wannabe actor in L.A. working as a waiter. Sound cliché yet? Also he’s gay, and an absolute slut. A group of Mormons move in next door to him and his coworkers bet him $50 that he can’t manage to sleep with one of them — a bet which he takes, but later regrets when he falls in love with one of the Mormons.

Latter Days is 90 seconds of soft-core porn wrapped in 106 minutes of eye-roll-inducing garbage. The only emotion it evoked in me was pity for the guy who highly recommended the movie to a room full of us who were so obviously hating it.

I imagine that the target audience is not people who want to enjoy a quality film, but those who want to be reassured that the too-pretty guy who cheated on them with eleven other people will some day learn what it is like to be in love, and chase after them at the airport.

I rate Latter Days 1 out of 5 homophobic Joseph Gordon-Levitts.