This is the second vertical AI BL drama I've sat through, and honestly I went in knowing better. I had it on while I was doing cardio at the gym, and what struck me was just how much the plot echoed the last one I watched. Same step brother romance angle, same mystery girlfriend showing up near the end, same extra guy pining after one of the leads. Genuinely the only thing going for it was the runtime, the whole thing wrapped up in forty five minutes flat. The setup kicks off with Finn moving schools because his mom just married into money. He finds out his new step brother Aiden goes to the same place, and he's warned to keep his distance from him. Their first run in at school is rocky, just like you'd expect, but there's this odd pull between them neither can shake off. Finn keeps telling himself not to read into it because Aiden's straight and openly homophobic. Things shift when some kids start bullying Finn and the student council president, Ryan, steps in to ...
We meet Thomas, who quickly narrates us his childhood life and how he met Oscar, a famous child star in a popular sitcom whose acting career was derailed when he was ousted by one of the tabloids. They got married and also had an opportunity to raise a young kid as foster parents for one year before the kid went back to his biological mother. All this happens in literally first 10 minutes. The film finally begins on how this starts to impact mostly Thomas and his relationships with people around him. Os car gets busy trying to resurrect his career. His best friend and her lesbian girlfriend are trying to conceive a baby through IVF, he also meets a lesbian mother raising a child with her gay best friend and then his closest gay friend, a player finally trying to date. As Thomas witnesses these queer families, he begins to wonder if he should consider becoming a parent once again. But this time, Oscar is very sure that he doesn't want to be a parent and would rather focus on restarting his career especially since finally he is getting an opportunity to do that. The film spends almost an hour plus on this inner turmoil that Thomas is facing about becoming a parent or not and how to balance this need with his love life, before finally he decides that becoming a parent is definitely more important to him than anything else.
This film tries to reflect on the dilemma of becoming a queer parent in today's world, when people are more tolerant, legally things are in place and there are support groups. Throughout the film, discussions of surrogacy, miscarriages, adoption, etc. surface in refreshing ways. There is no unnecessary drama of any sorts. No cheating partners or anything. People are mostly content with Thomas' issue being how strongly he really feels about becoming a father again. He knows he wants to but he isn't sure how to balance that with his husband's need of not wanting one. A similar focus is given to the struggles of the lesbian couple, especially Thomas' best friend who keeps trying but is struggling to conceive. The film is also about finding your own chosen family and strengthening your bonds with them. The problem with the film is that it doesn't know what it want to say for the longest time and when it does it feels like it's saying that children are needed to complete a fulfilled relationship. This could have worked well with a slice-of-life approach, but considering the feel-good rom-com template adopted by the film, the screenplay does come off as a bit unpolished. It is a sincere attempt to explore the existential dilemma of queer parenting and its various facets, but feels unpolished and too stretched. I wish the tiresome narrative was slightly more uplifting to make this film a little more fun to watch rather than feel dragged. (5.5/10)
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