Make the Yuletide Gay
Reel Affirmations 2009
Review by Tim Plant
Rating: 
(1 out of 5)
Sunday, 10/18/2009, 7:00 PM
Feature presentation, $10 at Shakespeare Theatre’s Harman Center for the Arts
ONE MORE REASON to hate the holidays. Rob Williams’s new film is like eating a candy cane: sticky sweet, makes you a little ill after a while, and one a year is more than enough. Devoid of any intelligence, Make the Yuletide Gay is a romantic comedy about a boy whose parents don’t know he likes other boys. Olaf “Gunn” Gunnunderson (Keith Jordan) is out and proud at college — HRC T-shirts and rainbows galore — but has to change clothes in a rest stop on his way home to Wisconsin. A lecherous older man lurking in the stalls is the type of humor Williams employs in an attempt for laughs. When Gunn’s flamboyant boyfriend Nathan (Adamo Ruggiero) makes a surprise visit, the tinsel starts flying. Add in Gunn’s wacky mother (a high energy Kelly Keaton) and his pot smoking, free-balling dad (Derek Long), and you have enough dysfunction for half of the Midwest.
Williams’s script is rife with clichés, juvenile humor and puns. Oh, the puns. There are more puns crammed into the film than needles on a Christmas tree. While one or two are worthy of an audible laugh, the rest should have been left in the middle school lunchroom where they belong.
Making visits as the Cameos of TV Shows Past, Alison Arngrim (Nellie from Little House on the Prairie) and Gates McFadden (Dr. Beverly Crusher from Star Trek: The Next Generation) have minor roles, which are fun…and sad in that ”is this what it’s come to?” kind of way. Make the Yuletide Gay has a higher groan factor than a humor factor, so it’s better not to add this one to your holiday list.
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