Ever since WB created its series “Smallville”, the idea of a
super teen has held traction. And
sometimes that even gets into gay comedy.
In “Unsolved Suburbia”, the 2010 film by Cheetah Gonzalez,
Marty (Johnny Lockhart) is the social renaissance-man, a high-achieving (grades, sports) high school (apparently in “The Valley”) senior getting
close to 18, straight during the week and gay on weekends. He has an appealing sidekick, long-haired Jake
(Stephen Christopher). Some one puts out
a hit on friend Thomas’s lover, and Marty gets to play male Nancy Drew. In the
meantime, danger comes close to home, as he tries to keep his boyfriend and girlfriend
from finding out about each other.
The film has a goofy background, where high school students
seem to consort with teachers and sports coaches in a way that in the real
world would get the teachers thrown in jail. (In California, the age of consent
is 18).
The film also takes us into Black and White to suggest a
fracturing of reality. At the end, we’re
not sure what planet Marty is on. The
film has a bit of “Judas Kiss” (June 4, 2011) effect, with likable characters (some of whom can "do everything") and layers, but
it seems off-hand, and the acting and speech sounds forced, as if the film had
been first acted in Spanish and re-recorded or dubbed (a lot of mid-section dialogue is in
Spanish). In California and Texas, it's common for "European-looking" people to come from ethnically Hispanic backgrounds and speak Spanish first.
The film is supposed to have a sequel, “Unsolved Summer
Vacation”.
The film comes from Ariztical and Hollywoodland
Entertainment. The official site is
here.
Need most gay comedy be this flippant?
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