I've been going through the star/producer Billy Eichner's twitter. He recently got in hot water for saying the reason the movie failed is because of homophobia. This, of course, means his twitter replies/quote tweets etc. are filled with chuds saying shit like "Go Woke, Go Broke" among a whole host of outright homophobia (thereby proving Eichner's point).

The trailer he has pinned is not very appealing. But everything else suggests the movie is really incredible. It has an 89% critic and 91% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, a 77 on Metacritic (where the audience score is being review-bombed by chuds), and an A on CinemaScore. In addition, Vogue called it the Best Rom-com of the Year, Collider has it as one of the best in recent years and Rolling Stone has it on its list of Best Rom-Coms of the Century.

There are a bunch of other reviews too, all very positive, in The Atlantic, Out , and Entertainment Weekly and endorsements from people like Chris Evans, Edgar Wright, Mariah Carey, Jack Black, Seth Rogan, Conan O'Brien, Seth Meyers etc.

All in all, it seems like a very good movie in which Eichner and others have put in a ton of effort. The fear is that because of the failure at the Box Office, this will make the major studios even more hesitant to put forth such movies (that star LGBTQ people, BIPOC etc.) because all they care about is, of course, profit.

There's an excellent thread by fellow star and producer Guy Branum that talks about this, along with responding to the only semi-genuine left/liberal critique of the film:

In talking about how cruelly Billy Eichner, white, cis, rich... demanded the queer community support his movie, a thing that is rarely mentioned is the rest of the cast... Billy asked for his movie to not surround him with famous movie stars, but with out LGBTQ+ performers.

Because of discrimination, there aren't many LGBTQ+ actors with box office draw. In casting the romantic lead of the movie, he could have asked Chris Evans, but instead he went with a guy who came out in 2008 and got stuck making Hallmark movies for 20 years, Luke Macfarlane, and yes, Luke is white and masc and cis and hot, but... Billy knew he had to draw attention to make $, and Luke is a gifted actor who draws attention.

And for the rest of the cast, Billy and Nick worked so hard to find veterans like Guillermo Diaz, who works constantly, but rarely gets to play gay, or stage actors like Becca Blackwell, who don't get many movies because LA has no idea what to do with bearded nonbinary d*kes. He found Allison Reese who was just doing her Kamala impression online, and pulled her into the mix. He fell in love with Ts Madison through her vines and helped continue her burgeoning acting career.

Billy took a risk convincing the straight guys and corporations to cast queer people without extensive resumes or B.O. draw, like me, in this movie. So when you pat yourself on the back for resisting the tokenizing, condescending marketing for the film. Also acknowledge that Billy Eichner held the door open for a lot of other, diverse queer people, and this movie doing poorly at the box office limits the opportunities which will be in our future.

TLDR: Bros = Good. Hating Bros = Bad, Chud Behavior (even if you think you have a valid, left-liberal critique). Bros doing poorly = Bad news for all minorities in Hollywood.

    • ChestRockwell [comrade/them, any]
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      edit-2
      2 years ago

      Not gay, so take my queer cinema with the requisite grains of salt but if you're willing to include subtitles Almodovar is an amazing queer filmmaker. His films are meaty and have the movie mindset, often good mixes of comedy and tragedy. La Mala Education (Bad Education) is a great noir, and I'm So Excited is a really fun comedy-ish movie (not nearly as deep as some of his other stuff tho).

      If nothing else though, Almodovar doesn't sanitize his queer characters. They're always sexual and alive in a way that really just makes the movie work.