SYNOPSICS
In & Out (1997) is a English movie. Frank Oz has directed this movie. Kevin Kline,Joan Cusack,Tom Selleck,Matt Dillon are the starring of this movie. It was released in 1997. In & Out (1997) is considered one of the best Comedy,Romance movie in India and around the world.
All of Greenleaf, Indiana is watching this year's telecast of the Oscars as Hollywood heartthrob and local boy made good Cameron Drake has been nominated for his first ever Best Actor Oscar for his latest movie role as a gay soldier. Cameron's high school English teacher Howard Brackett is overjoyed when Cameron wins the award and mentions Howard's contribution in his acting life. That joy turns to horror when Cameron mentions to the worldwide audience that Howard is gay, especially horrific to Howard as he is engaged to fellow teacher Emily Montgomery, a woman with self-esteem issues as she had battled weight issues most of her life before she lost seventy-five pounds for the wedding. Howard's life is totally disrupted as Hollywood media descends on Greenleaf in order to get Howard's story. The rest of Greenleaf also openly wonders if Howard is indeed gay, as he exhibits many stereotypical gay tendencies, such as being neat, and loving music, dancing, poetry and Barbra Streisand. His...
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In & Out (1997) Reviews
Hilarious
Some movies want to make us think, some want to excite us, some want to exhilarate us. But sometimes, a movie wants only to make us laugh, and "In & Out" certainly succeeds in this department. Indiana high-school teacher Howard Brackett (Kevin Kline) is going to be married to fellow teacher Emily Montgomery (Joan Cusack) in three days, but the whole town is more excited about the Oscar nomination of former resident Cameron Drake (Matt Dillon). But when Cameron wins an Oscar for playing a gay soldier, he thanks his gay teacher, Howard, for inspiration. What follows is Howard denying it in an hilarious set of mishaps in a truly screwball fashion. Kevin Kline is great, exuding gay stereotypes. Joan Cusack really has a knack for screwball antics. Debbie Reynolds is utterly hilarious as Howard's mother. And Bob Newhart is also a hoot as the homophobic principal. Gay screenwriter Paul Rudnick really achieves a delicate balance here. He knows the stereotypes and exploits them in a way that's mostly tolerable to conservative Midwesterners and yet mostly inoffensive to the gay audience. It's not exactly progressive, but it's funny and inoffensive, and definitely a step up from the previous year's "The Birdcage."
Yes, it is funny, but still a bait-and-switch
Without a doubt, much humor and good performances. The scene with the "Exploring Your Masculinity" tape (this is the one where Kline is told that real men don't dance) had me laughing so hard that I had tears in my eyes. Unfortunately, everything that I had seen and read about this movie before I went to see it indicated that it was a case of a man who was wrongly "outed"... period. When it became evident that he was going to end up being gay (notice his foot-lifting during the kiss with Selleck), I felt very let down. I didn't want to go see an "it's okay to be gay" movie (there seem to be enough of that type already). I wanted to see the teacher who seems to fit the "gay profile", if you will, gets falsely outed, but nevertheless is "straight". Making Peter Malloy (Selleck) gay shows that gay doesn't have to fit any preconceived profile (remember, this is the guy who played Magnum, P.I.). But by making Howard Brackett (Kline) gay, it supports the idea that sensitive, poetry-loving (etc.) men must be gay. The viewer would have been better served had the movie stuck with the premise that gay/straight doesn't have to fit a stereotype; let "manly" Sellect be gay and "sensitive" Kline be straight. Don't interpret this as a gay-bashing/homophobe review; it is not. I sympathize with Kline's character inasmuch as I am a man in his early 30's who is still unmarried, and occasionally catches the "how come he isn't married" sort of thing from people.
Yes, it's very funny, but it sends the wrong message
As about 109 other reviewers have mentioned, this is an extremely funny film about a high school teacher whose former student mentions him as being gay on national television. His current students immediately start looking for signs that he's gay. Oh, he likes musicals and other performing arts and literature, he's a good dresser, all the stereotypical stuff. His fiancée starts to doubt him. The townspeople start to look askance at him. Here's the part that annoyed me. He turns out to really be gay. Now why did that annoy me? Not for the reason you might think. It reaffirms stereotypical American ideas about masculinity, the American conventional wisdom that says that "real men" don't like the arts or literature. It reinforces the masculine straitjacket that limits men's interests to work, sports, and television. A trivial concern? Not for me. I know straight men were been beaten up by high school gay-bashers and called names because they had interests that "real men" aren't supposed to have. Interestingly, this stereotype of masculinity seems to be less common in other countries. I wish the movie would have broken through the stereotype by having Kevin Kline's character be straight and marry his fiancée, with an epilogue of her gloating about how she has the only husband in town who will attend the ballet with her. I wonder how many teenage boy musicians or artists got beaten up by gay bashers as a result of this movie.
Decent, but could have been better
I enjoyed this film quite a bit. Kevin Kline is one of my favourite actors, and after seeing this, I'm still firm in the belief that he can pull off any role he has a mind to. Joan Cusack's performance, while too over-the-top for some, really worked well for the part in my opinion... she and Kline both kept me laughing throughout. The supporting cast turned in nice performances as well, and Tom Selleck needs to keep that face clean-shaven more often. ^_- This film was still quite amusing in some parts, but it seemed to indulge in a few too many stereotypes. Overall, I think the actors did the best they could with what they were given, and while it wasn't *quite* what I had hoped for, it was still good entertainment for an afternoon... if you're not too sensitive about the Heterosexual vs. Homosexual issue, then you'll probably get quite a few good laughs out of this one.
IN(ane) & OUT (of touch)
IN & OUT is certainly aptly titled: What was once "in" as being representative of gay cinema is now decidedly "out." When it first came out (so to speak) it seemed so bright and fresh and funny and original -- and now it just seems so, well, lame. As one of the first mainstream films to deal with homosexual themes and become a box office success in the process, IN & OUT was blessed with its uniqueness. It was good-natured, well-intentioned, non-threatening and seemingly politically correct, yet old-fashioned in a Capraesque sort of way. What's not to like? But as gay slowly, but assuredly, became mainstream, sissy stereotyping of gay characters, while certainly still with us, ceased to be the only option for discriminating moviegoers. Thus, there is a backlash; it even became a point of contention in another gay movie. In ALL OVER THE GUY, one gay man saw it as an amusing comedy romp, while his blind date saw it as a homophobic insult. A positive story about coming out strikes some as a phony tale of a cowardly, self-hating homosexual unwillingly being forced out of the closet. Like its TV counterpart, "Will & Grace," IN & OUT took anti-gay attitudes and twisted them around so that the butt of the jokes instead became the source. Stereotypes were mocked by the very people who were demeaned by them and in the process the insult was possibly neutralized. In theory, for instance, having a gay man suggesting that a fondness for Barbra Streisand is a sign of homosexuality should somehow show just how ridiculous such an assumption is. And that might be true, if done once. But resorting to the Streisand joke again, and again, and again, and again, doesn't negate the stereotype, but confirms it, again and again and again. Mirroring, very loosely, Tom Hanks' very public outing of his high school drama teacher at the 1993 Oscars, the film gives us Kevin Kline as a mild-mannered, small-town high school teacher whose life -- and impending marital plans -- are thrown into chaos when a former student outs him while accepting an Academy Award. The intended compliment inspires nationwide interest and small-town scrutiny. Problem is that Kline's Howard Brackett denies being gay to everyone, especially his soon-to-be bride (Joan Cusack). This could have made for a semi-serious slice-of-life comedy of social mores, and sometimes it seems to strive for that. But the filmmakers are as ambivalent about the point of their film as Howard is about his sexuality. The film never finds a consistent tone and never really tries to; it is farcical one minute, broadly satirical the next and then desperately bittersweet. The film at first seems to be trying to convince us that, despite all the circumstantial evidence, the persnickety Howard really isn't gay. And Kline seems to be playing the part just that way. Until finally he admits he is gay, but just didn't know it. Huh? It's as if he has been persuaded to turn gay against his will just to fit in with a preconceived image. Plus, his coming out is more like an admission of guilt than a pronouncement of pride, let alone acceptance. The filmmakers seem to want it both ways; to boldly denounce the stereotypes as being unfair and then (nudge-nudge, wink-wink) gleefully snickering in admission that they are all oh-so true. It's pretty much the same message being served up by "Will & Grace" "Queer as Folk" and "Queer Eye for the Straight Guy" and other such pop culture sell outs. It is like confronting the homophobe by first admitting that he is absolutely right about everything. The grain of truth within the stereotype becomes the undisputed universal reality. Even granting the film a benefit of the doubt that its intentions are benign, there is this gnawing sense of hypocrisy. Just before the rousing, if predictable, "Macho Man" finale, one of Howard's students (Shawn Hatosy) shows his support for his beleaguered teacher by coming out at the high school graduation. What seems to be a remarkable act of moral courage is subverted when, in Spartacus style, everyone in the auditorium also announces "I am gay!" It is supposed to be a Capraesque moment of gutsy small-town loyalty, but it rings utterly false. And worse, it demeans the young man's brave act, clouding whether his pronouncement is even true or merely a noble gesture. A film about coming out trivializes that very act. Then the film ends with a celebration of the traditional heterosexual wedding, as if to tell the straight audience "Don't worry. People like Howard are harmless and no threat to your lifestyle." Again, huh? Howard and his problems seem to blend into the crowd, which may be the point of the story: "Gay's okay, as long as it doesn't get in the way." Yet, even realizing just how shallow and dishonest the film is, it still manages to be, well, funny, especially in its more ridiculous moments. The mock Academy Awards show and Kline taking a lesson on how to be masculine make the film worth watching. It is what it wants to be, a harmless sitcom with only the vaguest connection with the real world. Cusack's over the top performance is grating, but the rest of the cast is just fine, led nicely by the always charming Kline. And kudos has to go to card-carrying Republican and NRA member Tom Selleck for his wonderful stereotype-busting performance: he plays a gay character who is not a gay caricature. Something the rest of the film should have emulated.