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Chained To My Bully Stepbrother (AI Vertical BL Drama)

By Golu
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 ...
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The Groomsmen: Second Chances

By Golu
An interesting initiative by Hallmark channel in fall of 2024. They came up with a romantic comedy trilogy titled The Groomsmen. This innovative series focuses on three best friends (2 straight and one gay) navigating the journey of love and matrimony from the unique perspective of groomsmen. I will of course focus just on the gay film, which is the second one in the series, but let's do a quick background. Danny, Jackson, and Pete are childhood friends who have always been there for each other. In the first part we see Pete meeting the love of his life at Danny's (the gay one) sister's wedding. Pete has a teenage daughter who also spends a lot of time with this trio.

Danny is in love with Zack, his business manager who also happens to be his best friend. His friends Danny and Pete know about it but Danny is scared to express his feelings because he fears if it's not reciprocated, he may even miss out on a friend. Zack is now dating Nolan and this bothers Danny. Soon enough the relation gets serious and Nolan and Zack decide to get married, leaving Danny shocked but he really loves his best friend. And Zack now asks Danny to be his best man at the wedding in Greece. Suppressing his feelings, Danny decides to be a good best man and plans everything about the wedding with Zack, especially given that Nolan is always super busy with work (big red flag). Because of busy schedule, its only Danny and Zack who end up going to Greece few days before wedding and they all all preparations spending every single minute with each other making it very hard for Danny. We don't really know much about Zack's feelings but one night they almost kiss. Danny cant take it anymore and the day before the wedding he confesses his love to Zack who is shocked and doesn't know what to do. In a typical runaway bride form, on the day of wedding; Zack decides that even he feels very strongly about Danny and he would rather spend all of his life with Danny and the two get married.

To be honest the movie is quite predictable, but what I really enjoyed were the beautiful locales of Greece. Clearly production values and money were not an issue here. As characters I am not sure where Zack stood all this while. Yes, Danny and Zack were extremely close friends, but there was never a hint that Zack was also into Danny. Agreed, that Nolan was full of red flags, but was that enough for Zack to realize that he loves Danny. I do understand that sometimes, you do not know what your heart desires and it takes an outsider to bring your feelings out and it seems like this is what happened here. It's just that it is a bit hard to digest. The actors all do a pretty good job, given it s a TV movie. We have seen the actor playing Danny do similar-ish roles in a few gay Christmas movies. What surprised me was the actor playing Zack. He had some broods charm to him that was very addictive. The other two movies, which I saw were also ok. I guess Hallmark does have to keep its conservative audience intact and this was a good way to plug in a gay film. As you would expect from this kind of TV film, this is a feel good, typical Hallmark sirupy plot with a plus that it depicts gay relationships in a normative manner, much closer to reality than the stereotypical prior mainstream depictions of gay relationships. Overall an expected decent watch. (6/10)
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