Purely Joyful Movie!

If you don't like this, we can't be friends.

The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.

"Poster Boy" tries so hard to make a statement—so very, very hard—that I really wished it was better than it is. Henry Kray (Matt Newton), the closeted gay son of a conservative North Carolina senator (Michael Lerner), grudgingly agrees to introduce the senator at a rally held at the fictional New York college he attends, if only so his father will stop smacking him at the breakfast table. But then Henry attempts to escape the duty, high-tailing it to the family's house in Palm Springs. Alas, an eager-to-please young Republican (Ian Reed Kesler) is sent to retrieve Newton and drag his ass back to NYC, though not before Newton can drag him to a gay bar then rent Kesler a shapely call girl for the night. Meanwhile, Anthony (Jack Noseworthy), a former gay activist and recently fired fashion house go-fer, is looking for love but only finding one-night stands while his roommate, Izzy (Valerie Geffner, doing her best Ally Sheedy-in-"The Breakfast Club" impersonation), pops Prozac and snarls at anyone within spitting distance as she tries to cope with being HIV-positive. As is to be expected, all these characters' paths will cross and collide (at times literally) on the way to a Big Moment.Heavy-handed though it is, the script actually has a few good points to make. If only screenwriters Ryan Shiraki and Lecia Rosenthal put as much thought into telling a story as making a statement, especially when they're preaching to the choir. As it is, the narrative is more like a series of contrivances meant to move the characters toward that Big Moment rather than plausible events arising from believable circumstances. Luckily, the movie is buoyed somewhat by fairly solid acting. Karen Allen is a welcome presence as the senator's chain-smoking, heavy drinking wife, even if her Southern accent is a tad bit overdone (conversely, Lerner's Southern accent is almost nonexistent). Director and co-editor Zak Tucker packs the movie with lots of style—from quick cuts to split screens to moody gels and filters—making his movie nearly unwatchable in the process."Poster Boy" also has continuity errors galore. Cigarettes are a particular problem, be it a reporter lighting a half-smoked cigarette in the opening scene, only to be shown seconds later with a fresh one dangling from his lips unlit; or Allen smoking a newly lit cigarette, then shown lighting it a quick cut later. There's also the extra so nice we have to see her passing Newton and Noseworthy twice in the same scene (made worse by the fact that Newton calls attention to her the first time around), and Lerner is shown getting into a limo with his hair a mousy brown when in the rest of the movie it's white. Other distractions: How do Noseworthy and Geffner—one unemployed, the other a bookstore clerk making $7 an hour—afford a chauffeured Town Car? And why the gratuitous female nudity in a movie that features gay men with hyperactive sex lives? Sadly, the two male leads are only fleetingly shown in their skivvies.For all its problems, "Poster Boy" isn't awful, but it made its statements so loudly and so often that I found myself tuning them out, wondering instead whether anyone in wardrobe was going to rustle up something else for Ms. Allen to wear besides that lavender suit.

If you are looking for a patch of blue in a new gay cinema gone bad, do not watch this film. It is an equal-opportunity mess. Bad writing. Bad cinematography. Bad acting. Bad everything. It is notable for its total lack of any sympathetic characters. Remarkable. The most aggravating thing about the movie is its bumbling stupidity in dealing with very serious issues which effect millions, such as AIDS, homophobia, sexism, corrupt politics. The second most aggravating thing about the movie is Karen Allen's blue suit, which she wears in every scene. And it's a really ugly suit! It is one of the very few movies I have watched to its conclusion despite my deepest desire to stop the pain of watching it. I can't really say what that is about. Perhaps it was like watching a train wreck. Believe me, this film did indeed earn my vote of 1.

Movies that are more about the inner lives, emotions and growth of the characters than they are about the situations depicted frequently have a hard time with critics and audiences. So it seems to be with this film, which is deeper than most of the reviewers seem able to see.The one facet of this production that most reviewers complain about is the writing. Well, I'm here to say that the writing is intelligent and subtle and just this side of brilliant. The people in Poster Boy aren't the one-dimensional, good or bad, smart or silly, honest or conniving characters they might have been. They're multifaceted, exposed in greater detail as the film goes on, and they all take emotional journeys, becoming larger and different, if still humanly flawed, from who they were at the start. Even the politician/father is more complex than we think at first; although perhaps predictably, because of the career he's chosen, he moves the least of the major characters. Henry Kray is embittered by the politicization of his life, yet we see him beginning to hope against his experience that the feelings Anthony shows him might possibly be real. Anthony, for his part, is in it at first for the political effect he can create by outing Henry, but he begins to see there's more to Henry than just the politician's son, and that the cause he was using Henry for is more complicated than he thought. The politician's wife shakes off her complacent acceptance of her role as scenic sidekick to the Senator. Izzie opens up more than she thought possible at first==Parker's knock at the gym door at the end, and Izzie's opening that door is the closest the movie comes to a conventional romance, but is just as much a metaphor for moving on after finally accepting what she's lost.Some people have expressed surprise or disappointment that Henry and Anthony didn't end up together; but this isn't primarily a romance. It's a story of realistic, imperfect people who touch each other's lives and take what they've experienced into their futures.This is one of the most intelligent movies of its kind this writer has ever seen, and sadly underestimated by most of its audience. 9 out of 10.

I just saw this movie yesterday and I for one, thought it was a terrific movie. I thought it's messages were great and I especially thought Matt Newton's performance was spectacular. I just felt that the one aspect of the ending didn't really work and that was the fact that Henry never made contact with Anthony again. You would think since he asked him to stay with him in the gym that they would've at lease kept in touch. But overall I thought this movie was very powerful and am still wondering why the critics have been so unkind to it. This includes Kevin Thomas of the L.A. Times who gives every gay movie a good review.