Winning Dad

I was a bit confused about the title of the film initially but it makes sense now. This film specifically is about a man wanting to win over the love and affection of his boyfriend’s father, who, although has come around accepting that his son is gay, is still very anti-gay and in his own words “gets sick to his stomach with the thought of 2 men together”. You can imagine that with a situation like this, things are ever gonna be easy.

Coby and Rusty are a couple. Coby works as a chef and right next door to him Rusty works as a bartender. Coby wants his father to know Rusty and comes up with a game plan for this. Coby and his father go an an annual camping trip and this time along, Coby forcefully manages to get Rusty along, as the man with whom he wants to get into partnership for opening of a new restaurant. As planned, at the last minute Coby bows out leaving Rusty and his dad to spend some time alone. Colby’s sister and mother know all about this but his father is a touch man to crack. Surprisingly Rusty and Coby’s father get along really good at the trip which makes Rusty comfortable telling the old man about who he really is and that he wants to get married to Coby. The old man gets very angry , upset and says all kinds of nasty things making it very obvious he will never accept such a thing. To retaliate, Rusty goes about telling Coby’s father about the details of their sexual life which breaks the old man down. He calls his wife depressed and comes back home. When Coby finds out what Rusty has done, he doesn’t want anything to down with him and they break-up without giving Rusty a chance to explain. Not that he is going to forgive his father either. The father soon realises what a huge mistake he has done (after he sees his son sad, his wife depressed and other signs), he decides to make amends. Because of him the boys happily come back together.

For a film like this, the subjects need to have a good chemistry, which was lacking between pretty much every relationship. Coby and Rusty seemed like friends rather than lovers. The father and son had absolutely no emotional chemistry. And finally the family, the mother, the sister; they all seemed characters but had no family chemistry among them. This is not to say that their acting was bad, but unfortunately thats exactly what it seemed it. Acting! It didn’t seem real or natural or even remotely believable. Coby was definitely better among the 2 actors but his character was so poorly fleshed out. He is not a big fan of his father but despite that he decides to just break up with Rusty after hearing what happened. If he is a true lover, he would have given Rusty a chance to explain. And then within a week they are both seeing other guys as if few months have passed. The father can’t decide what he is more upset about, accepting his son is gay or accepting his sex and complete family life? The sister’s character was required to read books and argue with her father, just to show even more how stubborn the old man is. Mom’s acting was pretty good and she was the most believable among all the actors in the film. The landscapes and the hiking areas shown in the film are beautiful and the cinematography is nice; but overall I think the film was probably made on a low budget, which is quite ok IMO. I feel the story had potential but somehow the soul was missing in the way it was treated.

Its not a bad subject, however i directed with more passion and realism, this could have been really good. (5.5/10)