Poster Boy Review
Completed on the eve of the 2004 presidential election, Zak_Tucker's Poster Boy is nothing if not timely. Aside from topicality and good intentions, the film is reasonably engaging and well acted. But it's also more than a little bit overwrought. The problems start with the character of the conservative Southern senator, Jack Kray (Michael_Lerner). Lerner brings a little depth to the characterization, but Jack is essentially written as an ogre, and the filmmakers would have benefited, both in terms of audience involvement and their thematic arguments, by making him more recognizably human. There's not a single attractive thing about the man, which makes his gay son Henry's (Matt Newton) conflict with him more predictably transparent and less interesting. Meanwhile, there's a surfeit of subplots going on, of varying plausibility. Valerie_Geffner does a fine job as Izzie, and has a surprisingly touching interaction with the senator's wife, Eunice (Karen_Allen, somehow making this over-the-top aging Southern belle appealing), but was it necessary to give her AIDS, an antidepressant addiction, and a ludicrous, underdeveloped backstory involving a bisexual former lover? Jack_Noseworthy is also very good, but his character arc suffers from similar needless complications. The film's immediacy and its charming cast allow it to overcome these flaws to some degree, and a framing device, which at first seems yet another pointless complication, turns out to add a welcome and surprising bit of nuance to the tale. Poster Boy may go a bit astray, but it is still a solid indie effort. Josh Ralske, Rovi
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