Eating Out 5: The Open Weekend
Reel Affirmations 2011
Rating: 
(1 out of 5)
Friday, 10/21/2011, 9:30 PM
Feature presentation, $12 at Lisner Auditorium
WHAT TO SAY about a movie that lacks the self-respect to follow its ambitions to be what it truly wants to be? It’s a question worth asking when considering Eating Out 5: The Open Weekend because, while creators Q. Allan Brocka and Philip J. Bartell might want us to think sex and comedy are getting equal billing in this supposed gay screwball sex comedy, it’s clear that they are far more interested in screwing and balls.
Put more plainly, should the inspiration to make another “Eating Out” movie strike either Brocka or Bartell, please save us all the trouble. Just make porn. At least then we can save ourselves the drudgery of having to sit through obligatory stretches of the kind of emotional struggles better handled in the first season of the original Beverly Hills 90210 television series.
And what would that struggle be? The dramatic plot that serves as the wobbly clothesline on which the makers have strung their eye candy, struggling attempts at Junoesque patter and humor that would be offensive were it not so bad?
Zack (Chris Salvatore), Benji (Aaron Milo) and their friend Lilly (Harmony Santana) are headed to a gay, all-male Palm Springs resort where Benji has convinced Zack to open up their relationship for the weekend. Casey (Daniel Skelton), Zack’s boyfriend before Benji, is also on his way to Palm Springs with his ”hag-in-training” Penny (Lilach Mendelovich). Casey is determined to show Zack that he’s doing just fine since their split so he convinces Peter (Michael Vara), a friend from high school who has come out, worked out and become… well… kind of a whore, to pretend to be his new boyfriend.
And, oh, the madcap hilarity that ensues. (Please insert emoticon indicating sarcasm here.)
On further consideration, Beverly Hills 90210 might be giving too much credit. Take away all the muscle men in swimsuits and the weak-kneed pop-gay studies issues covered by Eating Out 5 and you have something closer to an episode of The Brady Bunch.
But why would anyone take away the muscle men in bathing suits, because that’s really the point of Eating Out 5: The Open Weekend. It may well be the first Palm Springs weekend people will be thrilled to see blissfully come to an end.
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