"The People We Hate at the Wedding": Two sisters and their mum find love, the gay guy doesn't and there's only one penis

  

The 2017 novel The People We Hate at the Wedding is about a wealthy British girl, Eloise, hoping to reconcile with her two American half-siblings, Alice and Paul, by inviting them to her lavish wedding.  Paul is gay, complete with longsuffering boyfriend. 

 Knowing how much Hollywood loves to straighten gay characters, I watched the 2022 movie version on Amazon Prime to make sure that Paul stays gay.

Scene 1: Various childhood antics of the half-siblings, including a disastrous Santa Claus-sitting with a very cute, harried harried Elf photographer (Brandon Johnston, left).

Scene 2: The young adult Alice, who works at a small desk in a big office, checks her mail: the invitation to her half-sister Eloise's wedding!   She calls her brother, Paul (Ben Platt), who works at some sort of counseling center, to see if he got one.  Yep.  "But We're not going.  We hate her!"  

Scene 3: The siblings' Mom tries on clothes and plot-dumps on the sales clerk: Her husband is dead, so her romantic life is over (she'll find love by Act 2). Also, her kids aren't going to Eloise's wedding because they hate her.

Scene 4: At work, Alice gets summoned by the Boss (Jorma Taccone), to screw in the supply closet, followed by lunch.  Jonathan wonders if she just likes him for his money.  "Of course not.  I like you for your dick."  

Scene 5: Paul is out with a straight guy(Randall Park) and three femme, double-entendre-spouting gay guys (Greg Barnett, Karan Soni, Pedro Minas), who brag about the new guy they've added to their threesome. Wait -- they are already a threesome, aren't they?

Three guys doing gay stuff together!  Paul is sick of gay hypersexuality and flamboyance, so he hangs back to talk to the straight guy. So this Paul is straight, too? 

 Then they all go to see King Lear.  At the line "How sharper than a serpent's tooth it is to have a thankless child!," Mom texts Paul, asking him to please come to the wedding. 

Scene 6:  Alice drops Boss off at his house, pretending to be an Uber driver so his wife doesn't get suspicious.  He wants a permanent relationship, so he's going to ask for a separation -- sometime.  Wife comes out of the house carrying a baby, making Alice feel guilty.

Scene 7:  Paul in bed with his boyfriend, discussing their disapproval of the three-way relationship. Wait -- he was one of the flamboyant three-way guys.  I'm confused.   

All they do is hug and chat, but I guess that's enough to make Paul canonically gay at Minute 14.

Paul explains why he hates his Mom: after his dad died, she threw out all of his stuff, and never mentioned him again.  Boyfriend talks him into the wedding anyway, because it's in London.  Ugh!  London is my least favorite city in Europe. I've visited 5 or 6 times, and never had a positive experience. 

Scene 8:  Alice watches her boss/boyfriend living a public life without her and decides to go to the wedding after all.  Then she goes into his office and slips off her underwear -- just as the housekeeper shows up.  Hey, the housekeeper is D'Arcy Carden, who starred with Kristen Bell in The Good Place!  I wonder who else from that show will appear.  Maybe Ted Danson?

Scene 9:   Paul at work.  He mentioned that he doesn't like scones, so the Boyfriend sent him a scone basket to be mean. Mom calls; he hangs up on her.  

Next, the Counseling Center boss, Dr. Goulding (Tony Goldwyn), found security-cam footage of him hugging a patient after an emotional breakthrough. Inappropriate!  A month of unpaid leave!  Now Paul has no choice but to go to the wedding. 

I'm bored.  I'll fast-forward to the good parts.

On the plane to London, Alice has a meet-cute with Love Interest #1 (Dustin Milligan, left). 

There's an establishing shot that doesn't show the Tower Bridge or the Eye in the Sky!  

We see Rich Sister  Eloise is in bed with her fiancee, Ollie (John Macmillan).  Nice chest shot.

Alice decides to bring Love Interest  to the wedding as her plus-one.  They have sex on the floor of their palatial hotel room, next to the bed. Nice chest shot.

Later he dumps her: "You have everything that any sane man would want, but you don't want a sane man."  So gay men are insane?  Or did you forget that gay men exist?  

More Love Interests and at least one cock after the break

Steve Zahn: From 1990s golden boy to 2020s depressed dad, with nudity all the way down.

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Agent Elvis: McConaughey as the King, Cavalero as a drug dealer with a bulge, and Gary Coleman as a dick with a dick

 Agent Elvis (2023) features Elvis Presley (Matthew McConaughey) interacting with some of the real people and events of the 1960s, like Timothy Leary, Howard Hughes, and the Rolling Stones concert at Altamont, but as a secret agent, working for the mysterious Commander (Don Cheadle).  Episode 1.3 has a Tony Cavalero sighting.

While filming A Change of Habit (1969), Elvis hears about the Moon Landing, and, upset that he's not going, decides to take out his frustration on some drug dealers.   His assistant Bobby Ray (Johnny Knoxville) tells him that Flyboy (Tony Cavalero), who hangs out in the studio parking lot, selling maps to movie stars' homes, actually sells cocaine.   His handler tells him that they still have scenes to shoot, but he rushes down to the parking lot.

Why is Flyboy dressed as a pimp to sell cocaine?  He explains that drug dealing and pimping have an intersecting clientele. 

Who is his cocaine supplier?  Flyboy doesn't want to say, because "snitches get stitches," so Elvis steals his clothes, ties him up in the back seat of his car, and sics his ape companion, Scatter, on him.  Faced with having his head bit off, Flyboy tells him.  

With Flyboy trapped in the trunk, Elvis enters a sleazy apartment building.  His handler appears again, ordering him to get back to the studio to film the remaining scenes. Besides, taking down drug dealers won't get him on the Moon Mission: "No matter what you do, it's not going to turn you into an astronaut." 

Elvis doesn't listen: he beats up the drug wholesaler and his henchmen, but Scatter kills them before they can tell him about the big cocaine shipment coming in.

More after the break

The Santa Clarita Diet Episode 1.1: Witty dialogue, zombies, Skyler Gisondo, Matt Shively, and bare butts

 Someone on a fan board said that Skyler Gisondo's character on The Santa Clarita Diet, Eric Bemis, is gay, but after a glance at the fan wiki, I can't see how.  He has a will-they-or-won't-they romance going on with Abby, the daughter of the zombified Sheila Hammond,  that lasts through three seasons before becoming canonical in the series finale; plus he has sex with other women and  female zombies.  But I'm game, so I'll review the first episode. 

Scene 1: Establishing shots of the stereotypic "idyllic" Santa Clarita. Heterosexual husband Joel awakens and sniffs Sheila, signaling how aroused he is, but she only likes to do it in a romantic setting -- no "humping."  

Anyway, time for breakfast: toast and a green liquid. They have two different conversations without interacting with each other. Teenage daughter Abby enters and demands a car, because they live in the middle of "freakin' nowhere."  I know the feeling.

Suddenly Sheila keels over with sharp pain in her stomach.  Abby wants to know if she's dying, but she insists that it's food poisoning. 

Scene 2: As everyone leaves for the day, they run into snoopy heterosexual neighbor Dan (Ricardo Chavira, left), and his wife.  They want to know why the light in the study was on all night; didn't Dan and Sheila have sex?  No, Sheila couldn't sleep, if it's any of his business. 

Dan points out that he's in the L.A. Sheriff's Department, far superior to the "dickless" cops, like Rick (Richard T. Jones, below), who happens to be walking by with his wife and baby.  Geez, they are establishing that everyone is heterosexual at first introduction.  What are they afraid of?  

Dan calls Rick "honeybunch," suggesting that he is a woman because he has such a feminine job.  Being a cop is feminine?  Then: "Suck me!", an insult, because of course gay sex would be terribly humiliating.

The men all leave, while Dan's kid Eric (Skyler Gisondo, top photo), in his Mom's car, gazes wistfully at Abby.  Mom tell her, "He worships you.  You're the queen of his spank bank."  So much for Eric being gay. Wait -- did his mom just tell his crush that he masturbates while thinking about her?  How would she know?  Why would she think this information was important to share?

She then invites Sheila for a girl's night out which may or may not involve "banging dudes."  Sheila refuses.

Are we done introducing the heterosexual characters yet?  I'm getting bored.

Scene 3: Whoops, more players.  They're really piling on the cast: A realtor, Sheila runs afoul of her mean-tempered, sexually-harassing boss and Gary West (Nathan Fillion, left), her new coworker. "Sell the Peterson house!  Do it today!" 

Scene 4: Sheila and Joel showing the house to a heterosexual couple. Disgust alert: suddenly she throws up green gunk. Joel pushes the couple into continuing the tour, and Sheila goes to the bathroom to vomit.  

When the couple finally manages to leave, Joel checks: Sheila is unconscious in a bathroom splattered with green gunk.  No pulse: dead.  Joel hugs her and says "no" while grinning enthusiastically.  Now he can call off the hit man? But she awakens and feels fine.

Scene 5: They've been waiting at the Emergency Room for three hours, due to being low priority ("Your wife threw up."),  Joel gives up and drives Sheila home. She sniffs him.  Weird -- a lot of sniffing in this show.

Gary, their new coworker, appears with get-well flowers.  He called a cleaning crew to take care of the mess in the house.  Sheila thanks him; Joel is jealous and possessive.

When she leaves, Gary reveals that the homeowners disliked their house being vomited on, and fired Sheila and Joel. They will be working with him now.  Listing poaching -- the biggest sin in realty.

More after the break