Humpday is the most realistic movie ever built around an absolutely ridiculous premise. Two best friends unite after years apart, and now they both lead very different lives. Ben is married, working a boring job, and trying to have a kid. Andrew has just blown into town after years spent in Mexico, where he lived in some sort of artist commune and worked on “art projects”. It’s only 24 hours before Andrew and Ben are planning to have sex.
Wait, don’t jump to conclusions. They’re both straight. The idea is borne at a hippy-dippy get-together where the notion of two straight men making gay porn is proposed as some sort of big, artistic achievement. For reasons that never really make a lot of sense, Andrew and Ben talk each other into doing it and neither seems willing to back down.
The movie is so much more than its straight friends have uncomfortable gay sex with each other premise though. That somewhat silly and unbelievable MacGuffin is used to ignite a surprisingly real examination of different kinds of relationships. It’s the dialogue that really sells it, Ben’s discussions with his wife ring shockingly true, the “hey bro” conversations between he and Andrew are the sort of weird, guy discussions you might have had with your friends a few hours ago. Humpday is smart, revealing, and funny.
It’s almost a shame though, that the movie must be followed around by this gay sex premise. Or maybe it’s the hetero male’s tendency to avoid it that’s the problem. Wherever the fault lies, most straight guys reading this review, or any other thing written about the movie for that matter, have probably already written it off as Brokeback Mountain 2. But this is, at its core, a movie for and about straight dudes. That’s this movie’s audience, but it’s going to be a tough sell getting any of them to see it. Listen up bros! See it.
