A movie franchise is like a shark. For it to stay alive, it has to move forward. It’s a lesson that the Eating Out franchise would do well to learn.
I liked 2004’s Eating Out a lot. The campy gay sex farce was downright revolutionary coming after decades of earnest, angsty coming out dramas (and two years before Another Gay Movie).
2006’s Eating Out 2: Sloppy Seconds wasn’t as successful, but it wasn’t a disaster.
But Eating Out 3: All You Can Eat, now playing in limited release, is the weakest entry in the series so far. It’s not that parts of it aren’t funny. It’s just that the movie takes absolutely no chances, choosing instead to change a few details and repeat what came before in the first two movies.
Q. Allan Brocka, the creator of Logo’s Rick & Steve the Happiest Gay Couple in all the World and writer and director of Eating Out and the producer of Eating Out 2, doesn’t appear to have been involved at all this time around, and it shows.
The movie quickly kills off the main character from the first two movies, Kyle (American Idol’s Jim Verraros), replacing him with Casey (Daniel Skelton), a wide-eyed gay innocent who takes one look at the slutty things going on during the opening credits and says, “I’m gonna love this town!”
Rebekah Kochan is back as the foul-mouthed Tiffani – “the slut with the mouth of shit.”
Casey and Rebekah team up and soon meet the sizzling hot Zack (Chris Salvatore), smarting over having just been dumped by his boyfriend, Lionel (The Janice Dickinson’s Modeling Agency’s John Stallings).
John Stallings (center)
Casey thinks Zack is out of his league, but Rebekah talks him into inventing a fake online profile, using photos of her hot ex, Ryan, under the (accurate) assumption that people are often more honest with strangers than they are with people they know.
Naturally, Zack falls in love with the non-existent guy who has Casey’s personality but who looks like Ryan. Then the real Ryan turns up back in town and, well, complications ensue.
It’s a clever premise, and there are some nice moments along the way. Daniel Skelton has a goofy, appealing charm, and Leslie Jordan has a nice cameo where he warns that “having sex with someone else to get over a break-up never works. Never.”
Leslie Jordan (left) and Mink Stole
There’re plenty of funny, and well-deserved, pokes at the gay community, as when a character logs online and is instantly bombarded with dozens of people wanting to “PNP!” Indeed, the film’s satire of the gay community’s online hook-up culture is the best part of the film.
And when clueless, self-centered Rebekah doesn’t know what “LGBT” means or how to pronounce “Matthew Shepard,” it’s hard not to laugh.
Still, too many jokes fall flat. Rebekah singing “Cum-baya” at a funeral instead of “Kumbaya” (“someone’s horny my Lord, cum-baya…”) was just sort of embarrassing. And the line “Blow job for your thoughts?” probably read funnier on the page.
Basically, the film suffers from Bad Gay Film-itis: uneven pacing, sometimes wooden acting even in the lead roles, and waaaaay too much talking.
In fact, the movie makes a big mistake by wrapping its “mistaken identity” storyline up too quickly. This results in a long middle section where the characters … talk.
And talk and talk and talk.
Then after another pivotal plot point, there’s still more talking. Not even two scenes of full-frontal male nudity can make all this talk not seem boring.
Chris Salvatore (left) and Daniel Skelton
But the biggest problem may be that we’ve seen this movie before, in the first two entries. There’s even one scene where Rebekah tries to get straight-guy Ryan turned on enough to have sex with guys that’s virtually the same as happened in Eating Out. This might have been intended as an homage, but it comes across as a repeat.
There is a fresh and funny sex comedy to be made in 2009. This isn’t it.
Watch the teaser trailer for Eating Out 3:
himself, though his rep vehemently denies it.
