Players: Romcom with a sports writer who ends up with who you expect, plus a bi guy who hooks up off-camera and some butts

 

Brock O'Hurn is starring in a new movie on Netflix, Players: a female sports writer named Mack has a foolproof plan for hooking up with guys, but then she falls in love with a hookup.  Do straight women really have trouble finding guys to have sex with?  Aren't they, like, hit on constantly?

Her best buddy is played by Damon Wayons, who I thought was homophobic due to the shockingly hateful In Living Color (Remember "Men on Film"?).  In 2019 he apologized for some homophobic tweets from 2011 to 2016: "I was unaware of the emotional impact they would have."  He is currently the executive producer of Glamorous, which stars a nonbinary or femme gay guy, so we'll check....

No wikipedia plot synopsis, no LGBTQ representation in the trailer. Grr -- I hate these Netflix one-word titles!  They make it impossible to research.  No way to tell if there are any minor "sassy work friend" gay characters, except by watching.

Scene 1: At a bar, Bran (Augustus Prew) and his crew discuss strategies for getting him into the pants of his target: pretend to be drunk and spill a drink on her?  Steal her scarf and pretend that you found it?   They decide on Fiji Fantasy: Bran and his "girlfriend," Mack, argue and break up in front of the target.  The girlfriend is careful to emphasize that it's not about the sex: he is incredibly fantastic at that; she just feels inferior because he's so rich and has been with so many attractive women. 

Their buds Adam and Little (Damon, Joel Courtney) watch in adoration: "This is a master class."  I think it's a little heavy-handed.  Unless she's a complete nitwit, the target will catch on that it's a hookup scam.

Scene 2:  She's a nitwit.  While Bran is off sexing her, the others walk home.  Adam wonders what will happen when the target finds out he's not rich.  "Are you new here?  After the sexing, he'll never see her again."  

Uh-oh, Bran calls: he "bucknerded" it by forgetting the name of his "girlfriend."  Why not use the same name every time? 

 But it doesn't matter, because hes's moving on to a new target; the guy by the white owl back at the bar.

A guy?  The buds approve  "Been awhile -- I like your style."  Mack suggests "Run Time Step."  Little, who happens to be Bran's baby brother, offers to help.

We don't see the play.Why do we see the girl target but not the guy target?  Afraid the audience will be offended by a gay hookup?  

Instead, we continue to focus on Adam and Mack.  They discuss their problems working for a newspaper, a "dying medium," Mack's new feature on memorable local sports, and "we're perfect for each other but don't want to admit it"."  The background song: "What cha waiting for?  Your prayers have already been answered!"  

Left: Joel Courtney's butt.

More romance after the break

Modern Family Episode 5.13: Jay acts girly, Mitch and Cam butt in, and Phil wants Keefe's lips on his mouth. Who doesn't?

I've been so busy checking Modern Family for homophobic subtexts with Adam Devine that I missed a gay subtext in Episode 5.13, "Three Dinners": 

Modern Family has a very large cast: closet-making tycoon Jay Pritchett; his new wife Gloria and her son;  daughter Claire and her husband and three children; and son Mitchell and his partner, eventually husband.  Episodes usually send smaller groups out on separate adventures, so I'll cover the three dinners separately.

Dinner 1: Jay and Gloria are dining with their close friends, Shorty (Chazz Palminteri, who has appeared in four previous episodes) and his wife.  They've been taking Spanish classes, because they're moving to Costa Rica!    They expect Jay and Gloria to be happy for them, but Jay immediately becomes critical: "You hate humidity! They have mosquitos the size of your fist!"

Cut to Shorty and Jay playing pool, Jay still complaining about the move: "It's a terrible idea.  You get into things without thinking, and then you need me to come and rescue you!" They argue about a lot of things from their never-mentioned-before shared history, and finally break up.

Gloria and her son Manny advise Jay that he always pushes his friends away, so when they leave him, it doesn't hurt as much. Aww, you can't open yourself up to love, unless it involves sex.

"You're the greatest generation," Manny says, "But you can't feel."

Jay lashes out with a facetious accusation that Manny and Gloria are lovers, an incest joke playing into the homophobic slur that all gay men are in love with their mothers.  He keeps playing on it until the viewers are cringing: "Why don't you two go cuddle!"

Later, we see Jake sitting in the kitchen, getting drunk and thinking about how much Shorty means to him.  Finally he decides to drive over and apologize -- dude, you're drunk -- but Shorty beats him to it.  They hug and cry.  Gloria, eavesdropping, snits: "This is a little girlier than I thought."  Wait, first you criticize him for not displaying emotion, and now you criticize him for displaying emotion.  Make up your mind, lady!

More dinners after the break

"Down Low": Netflix bait-and-switch movie that turns a gay hookup into something dark. With Simon Rex's dick.

 

Down Low, on Netflix (2023). "An overeager massage therapist guides a client with repression through his first queer encounter, but their hookup has a less-than-happy ending." 

A downlow guy lives as a "family man" who has achieved the entire heterosexual trajectory of house, job, wife, and kids, but has sex with men secretly.  Unless "down low" means something else here.

So the family man tells the masseuse that he likes guys, so she hooks him up, and things go south?  Sounds interesting.  But before I jump in, I always conduct some research, to avoid nasty surprises.

WTF?  This plot synopsis on wikipedia sounds like a completely different movie!  There are like a dozen nasty surprises, any one of which would have me "noping" out of there.  

Zachary Quinto stars as "family man" Gary.  I've seen Zachary Quinto in Star Trek, American Horror Story, and The Boys in the Band. Something about his smug, weasly expression grates on my nerves.  Nope #1

He's not on the downlow at all.  He is dying of a brain tumor. Nope #2: no movies about people who are dying of incurable diseases.  Why would anyone ever want to see a movie like that?  How could anyone stand to act in it?  Or write the script?

When he discovers that he is dying, Gary decides to come out, whereupon his wife dumps him.  Not a nope, but really homophobic of the lady to dump him just because he's gay.

The massage therapist is actually a hustler, Cameron (Lukas Gage).  Maybe they do massage too.  This promotional still makes him look like a trans woman, but in the synopsis, the character is always described with he/him pronouns.  Maybe it's a misdirection, so viewers will think that Gary is hooking up with a lady.    

The Hustler uses a dating app to find Gary a hookup  (Sebastian Arroyo).  Wait -- why not just have sex with him yourself?  That's what you're being paid for.

Unfortunately, the hookup does not find Gary attractive enough to screw.  Everyone argues, and he is accidentally killed Nope #3: the abrupt death of a major character. 

Gary and the Hustler hire a Necrophiliac (Simon Rex) to have sex with and then dispose of the Corpse. Nope #4: it's never really come up before, but necrophilia is a big nope.

Due to plot complications, the Necrophiliac can't do his job until the next day, so they spend the night mopping up the blood and smoking crack.  Nope #5: amoral major characters aren't a major "nope," but if I'm already annoyed from watching Zachary Quinto... 

By that time, the Corpse has come back to life and is trying to get away.  The necrophiliac kills him again, and then Gary and the Hustler kill the Necrophiliac.  Nopes #6-7: too many people killing each other too eagerly.  This is definitely not a comedy.

Then they have sex with each other.  You could have just done that at the start, and avoided the multiple murders.  

Later, after Gary dies, the Hustler shows up at his funeral, yells at the ex-wife and the church that abandoned him when he came out, and steals the body.  He dumps it in the lake, which he thinks is a better memorial. Nope #8: portraying gay people as perpetual outsiders, rejected by church and family.  Not really a nope, but way homophobic.

Moral: Always read more than one plot synopsis or watch more than one trailer.  They often make completely contradictory claims.  Remember when Road to Terabinthia was advertised as a fantasy like Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia?  It's about a girl who is dying.

Down Low is not about a guy in the downlow.  It's about a guy who is dying. 

Bonus bulge and dick pics after the break.  Warning: explicit.

There's a guy in Arkansas: Eight Arkansan hunks playing chess, throwing an axe, and letting it all hang out

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