Oh my God, where to begin. Let’s start with gay bars of the early eighties, in which apparently a gi-gan-tic soup-strainer ‘stache was required for entry. Which is awesome. And actually, the movie’s whole approach to the gay scene was pretty progressive for that time; I thought it was going to be more along the lines of the Melrose-Matt lots-of-hugs portrayal of gay men, so that was a pleasant surprise. But the movie itself…so, so bad. Hilariously bad. Laugh-out-loud bad, starting with the fact that the movie begins with Kate Jackson’s direct address to the camera, reminiscing about her ex-husband’s Gilbert and Sullivan albums. …Yeah. No idea he was gay? At all? And then Harry Hamlin’s character, on top of being acted by Harry Hamlin, which, enough said, is basically Dawson Leery. And so, so many scenes just bust out the PSA-speak about homosexuality, and Ontkean does his blocking like he’s in a musical, and then Kate Jackson is brooding while listening to Pinafore and then she SMASHES the record and starts SOBBING and it’s just totally over the top from start to finish. That said, the bad parts are really entertaining, and it has its sweet moments, and in spite of being really clonky about it, it’s pretty feminist in its approach to Kate Jackson’s career and so on. Totally worth renting. (3/26/06)

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