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| Directed by Simon Shore; Starring Ben Silverstone, Brad Gorton, Charlotte Brittain, Stacey Hart, David Lumsden, Jacquetta May, Kate McEnery, Patrick Nielsen, Tim Harris, James D. White, Louise J. Taylor, David Elliot, and Morgan Jones |
If there is one thing that I adamantly hate in films today it would be in the genre of teen comedies. I have sit through just too many over the years. Painful crap like She’s All That and 200 Cigarettes, all so bad that mixed together, they could not garner a recommendation. This had seemed to be the case for the year (with the exception of Never Been Kissed) until I found the problem when watching Get Real…all of them are too heterosexual. No, I’m not trying to put out some political belief here, but I had yet to see such performances from a teen cast in the other films. The performance from Silverstone in Get Real is way beyond anything Freddie Prinze Jr. could dream of.
Get Real is about a 16 year old in England that is gay, but chooses not to let it be known. Steven Carter (Silverstone) has known that he is gay since he was 11, but only himself and his neighbor/friend Linda (Brittain) know his secret. He normally just sits around the local park and finds men at the restroom. It is at that location that he finds his first love, John Dixon (Gorton). Not only is John one of the more popular guys at school, but he is also very closeted. He likes Steven but cannot help but want to keep any relationship they might have in the closet as well. Steven goes to great lengths to get near John, despite John’s many complaints. One of the things Steven does is join the school magazine staff so he can take pictures of John. This turns out a problem because one of the female writers for the magazine (Hart) begins to get a crush on Steven.
The performances in this are beyond anything I’ve seen English language in an American released this year. I find it interesting that the best female performances this year have been in a French film and the best male performance has been in a British film. Both Silverstone and Gorton are terrific in their somewhat equal, yet somewhat distant characters, with Silverstone shining well beyond Gorton. The script is well written by Patrick Wilde (who wrote the play basis for the film, What’s Wrong with Angry). I also thoroughly liked the direction by Shore, especially in a beautifully crafted single cut and pan through a dance at the school prom (if the other proms I’ve seen this year had been this well directed then I might not have been so tired of them). My only problem with the film was in that it is a bit overlong, especially in the middle third. Though I have seen very little in the genre of homosexual films, Get Real joins Gods and Monsters as the few good ones in the bunch (just see Jeffrey and Billy’s Hollywood Screen Kiss to see just how bad gay films can get).
