John G. Young's BWOY: very nearly good enough to give gay movies a bad name

Well acted but beyond dreadful in most other aspects -- with characters and situations so stupid and unbelievable as to boggle the brain -- BWOY, the new film from John G. Young, tracks a middle-aged married man whose young son has recently died and who is now spending most of his time online, trying to find a gay relationship. We can buy this online love story, of course (and have been at least since the time of Craig Lucas's fine play and the excellent movie based upon it, The Dying Gaul). But aside from its central, obsessive relationship, everything in this tired film falls utterly flat.

As both writer and director, Mr. Young, shown at left, has a lot to answer for. His primary failure is to make the marriage/ relationship of his leading man, Brad (Rent's Anthony Rapp,below), and wife, played by De'Adre Aziza (shown at bottom, with Ashton Randle, who plays the couple's dead son) into something remotely believable.

Instead, we get two people who appear to have almost no relationship at all.

The couple barely seems to know each other, let alone live together in any kind of marriage. Over and over again, their behavior beggars belief -- from their near-complete lack of communication skills (could the filmmaker's have bothered to show us even one scene that might make this marriage real?) to the manner in which she, way too belatedly and coincidentally, discovers her hubby's online relationship.

If what we see here is the extent of the couple's bonding, then this marriage is hardly worth saving. And this is just fine, since most of the movie is devoted to our "hero's" budding romance with his online cutie, Yenny, a Jamaican boy played with sweetness and enthusiasm by Jimmy Brooks, shown at right. But is Yenny for real? Ah, we shall see...

Throughout the entire movie, we view Brad almost always at work (in boringly repetitive scenes) or online with Yenny. In both locales, all we can surmise about Brad is that is he is one-note and either shockingly stupid or amazingly naive.

As it rolls along, the movie goes from silly and implausible to -- as the foolish climax approaches -- big time melodrama. (Yes, that is indeed a gun you see above.) By the finale, the moral here would seem to be: You'd sure as hell better pay your credit card bill. (And that goes for our boy, Brad, as well.)

If you enjoy rolling your eyes and guffawing at nonsense, by all means take a chance on BWOY. Otherwise, I'd recommend just about any other gay film available (Netflix streaming has oodles from which to choose).

Meanwhile, the movie -- from Breaking Glass Pictures and running a thankfully short 86 minutes -- opens this coming Friday, March 31, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Music Hall 3. A home video release will follow fairly closely on the heels of theatrical exposure: Look for both DVD and VOD to arrive on Tuesday, April 4.