Wonderfully offbeat film!

That was an excellent one.

The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

It is both painfully honest and laugh-out-loud funny at the same time.

Being a masculine, wholly heterosexual man, I slipped into my pj's, lit and candle and settled down to watch a movie about 2 straight guys talk themselves into having gay sex.Humpday is about two best friends, separated by different lifestyles, brought a little too close together again by a "I'm not backing out of this" style drunk/high bet about making a gay art sex video.Watching these 2 superbly sculpted characters interact is a joy to anyone who has ever had a proper friend...whom they would sleep with on film for art if they had to. Their incredible well portrayed relationship begins to strangely rope you in to kinda wishing they'd go through with the deed, no matter how much the thought initially makes you feel all ewwwww inside.A few times I caught myself relating a little too much to their plight, and I doubt I'm gonna be able to look at certain friends of mine again.The script is bare and honest, perfectly delivered by the 3 main characters, and is a solid foundation for this almost documentary style movie.All in all, Humpday with not only make you cringe to the corest of your core, but also make you ask a few questions about yourself that you really don't want to be asking.

"Humpday," Lynn Shelton's indie about straight men attempting gay porn for an erotic film festival, has been praised for its honest portrayal of male relationships, but any goodwill I had for the film was squandered on the intensely dislikable protagonist, the (come on) unbelievable plot line, and complete lack of dramatic payoff. "Humpday" is a stillborn Sundance fiasco with few if any redeeming qualities.The premise, while certainly original, takes shape only after overcoming a rickety stepladder of clichéd comic situations. You know them: crazy old friend needs a place to crash, husband forgets wife's special dinner, husband lies, digs himself deeper. The situations might have been forgivable in an ends-justify-the-means sort of way, but the film is being sold on its premise and its title, and fails to deliver as advertised.The principal cast is small and they argue a lot. There's Ben (Mark Duplass), the idiot husband who plays both sides, either blaming his wild friend for his own decisions or condescendingly touting his "great" relationship with his wife as a wildcard for his reckless behavior, his buddy Andrew (Joshua Leonard), the slovenly, worldly hipster whose artsy lesbian acquaintances spark the drunken conversation that leads to the auspicious idea, and Ben's eternally forgiving wife, Anna (Alycia Delmore), whose ability to tolerate her husband's stupidity is surely her greatest asset. Most of their dialogue is improvised, and the film frequently feels more like six fifteen minutes scenes than a properly paced comedic feature.The laughs are few and far between the clunky roundabout verbal tennis matches, and are completely undercut by the characters. It's assumed we feel Ben and Andrew's friendship at least peripherally, and the filmmaker portrays them as lovable, misguided heroes, though the 'misguided' bit is the only part that really seeps through.Worse yet, the script only lamely attempts to legitimize Ben or Andrew's inexplicable desire to see the act to its completion. Even sober, neither will back out of having sex with the other, in what we can only assume is the female writer/director's misinformed representation of machismo. And when Ben tells his wife, "I'm not sure why I want to do this," it reads as a screenwriter's confession. The two behave like stubborn children for an hour, only to somewhat appropriately chicken out when the moment arrives, and the film becomes more an examination of exceedingly weak characters than their bond of friendship as a result."Humpday" brings very little to the independent film scene, and is never as funny or controversial as the trailer might lead you to believe. Truth told, the film plays it safe, reducing its homosexual content to the type of jokes you would expect in any given PG-13 sex comedy. There's precious little genuine human interaction on display, and while the cop- out ending imagines itself a more profound statement than its alternative, it ultimately cancels out the only interesting thing the film has going for it. It's a reaction I couldn't anticipate, but I've never been so disappointed by a lack of gay porn.

Lynn Shelton has written and directed a comedic pleasure with "Humpday". It is delightfully funny and incredibly genuine throughout. It is a serious comedy with sexual overtones that provoke thought and reason in the inquisitive movie fans. It is the story of two male friends in their 30 somethings who are reunited in a brief interlude that is interlaced with drugs, alcohol and very believable conversation. it is the incredibly believable conversations that are most intriguing. The talents of Lynn Shelton sparkle in the dialog that she has put to pen. She also has a delightful role in this picture that I can highly recommend to mature audiences.

The bulk of the film for me felt like having a heart to heart talk with a lover which isn't really something that I want to pay money to do. I was constantly feeling bad for the things that the characters were putting each other through. While I found the interactions to be realistic, it was so strenuous! It was nice to get a laugh once the two guys tried in a half-assed manner to get down to business, but then there was the sadness that again showed up once the two started to realize that they were going to give up yet another thing. They're locked into that same pattern of not being able to follow through with things.I'm really disappointed by this film. Good acting, annoying camera direction, and a plot device that could easily have fit a 90 minute film, but just couldn't seem to the way it was envisioned. Ah well. Oh, and it was too weird realizing that was Josh from Blair Witch!