by JANET SMITH
In & Out
Directed by Frank Oz. Starring Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck.
Now playing at Capitol 6.
Greenleaf, U.S.A. is an alternate universe where the sun always shines, all the houses have verandas, and high school teachers can still be fired if they're rumored to be gay.
It's here that In & Out sets the sometimes-hilarious, sometimes-misguided story of Howard Brackett¬a teacher who's "outed" by an Oscar-winning student. The movie might be considered risqué in Middle America, but, as the Barbra Streisand jokes pile up, one wonders how subversive it really is.
Kevin Kline plays Brackett, an English teacher who likes to wear bow ties, ride an old-fashioned bicycle, and recite sonnets to a classroom that obviously hasn't been hit by overcrowding. He's planning a fairytale white wedding to Emily (Joan Cusack) when hometown star Cameron Drake (Matt Dillon) makes his Oscar acceptance speech, thanking his "gay" teacher, Mr. Brackett. As the news crews descend on Greenleaf, Brackett feels more and more pressure to get married. If he doesn't, his wife will descend into overeating again, his mother (Debbie Reynolds) and father (Wilfred Brimley) will kill him, and his principal (Bob Newhart) will fire him.
Along the way, Brackett starts to wonder about his own sexual orientation. This makes for some hilarious scenes¬a self-help tape to teach him how to be masculine and yell out "Yo!" and "Hot damn!" descends into bumping and grinding to Donna Summers, and Peter Malloy (Tom Selleck) lays an unexpected smooch on Brackett at Greenleaf's main intersection. But amid all the knee-slapping, there's a nagging question: closeted or out, straight or gay, don't most men have a pretty good idea about their sexual orientation long before they hit their mid-40s? Not in Greenleaf, it seems.
Fortunately, there's more to In & Out than Kevin Kline's sexual waivering. Joan Cusack is a scream as a bride on the tear, and Shalom Harlow, of all people, does a biting parody of her own, anorexic supermodel status.
Still, the bigger lessons seem trite. Amid tinkling xylophone-and-strings crescendos and vaseline-lensed landscapes (no surprise coming from Muppets director Frank Oz), Greenleafers learn to accept people. One old lady likens being in the closet to secretly using someone else's Rice Krispie Squares recipe and calling it your own. Life is a lot simpler in Greenleaf.
The end's moralization will probably ring hollow to audiences who live in a city where two men can walk down a street hand-in-hand and barely raise an eyebrow.
In & Out provides a few laughs, but it has all the conviction of Seinfeld's infamous "not-that-there's-anything-wrong-with-that" episode.
|
