by Gabriella Apicella

I don’t understand guys too well. Or the alpha-male type of guy anyway. They baffle me – as I’m assured women baffle men.  Not only in the ways they relate to me, but particularly the ways they relate to one another; the competitiveness, the constant trading of insults, the “what if” conversations that become as important as ending world poverty when mixed with enough hard booze to stock a Hackney off licence.  And in a way, I’m not sure I want to understand all that sort of stuff… I tried very hard to a few years ago, and once found it endearing, but (sorry guys) I have to say that these days I find it sort of dull.

So, this is meant to be a review of a film, right?  Well, Humpday is about two straight guys in their mid-thirties who get very drunk and decide they’re going to make a gay porn movie to enter into an amateur porn film festival.  Then they sober up, and as the day of the shoot draws closer, doubts set in. Oh, and one of them’s married!

It would be unfair for me to say bad things about this film, as it’s well shot, well acted, well scripted, well directed, all by Lynn Shelton.  But it just wasn’t my kind of thing.  These two really self obsessed characters obsessing, analysing, procrastinating – aaagghh! Either hump or don’t – I don’t care!  Who I did care about (and you can probably see this coming from this fully paid up member of Feminists-R-Us) was the wife, who is fantastically well played by Alycia Delmore.  Her reactions and expressions as her rather pathetic husband attempts to explain why he wants to film himself having sex with his old college buddy are amongst the very funniest moments in the film.  But that’s the thing with this movie, if you can empathise with the guys, you’ll like the whole film – they are rarely off screen, and their macho awkwardness as they tackle their predicament is what drives the comedy and the plot.

There are themes in the film about prejudice, growing older, the things that give life meaning and the things that don’t.  It’s entertaining, and it’s quite funny in places.  But without wishing to be really mean, listening to the two main characters endlessly debating and intellectualising whether or not to hump made me think of the kind of conversation Dawson and Pacey may have in an X-rated episode of Dawson’s Creek.  (And what would Joey say if she found she was married to someone with homosexual tendencies!?)

If you found it hilarious in Friends when Chandler’s male boss kept on slapping his arse affectionately, or in Sex and the City when it was a woman that finally made Samantha ejaculate, you may well find this one of the funniest, cleverest and freshest comedies around. If you didn’t, you won’t. But one thing I must admit – I kinda wanted to watch their gay porn movie at the end!