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Mulligans

Mulligans (2008)

May. 18,2008
|
6.2
| Drama Romance

When Tyler Davidson brings his college buddy Chase home for the summer holidays a secret is revealed that threatens to tear his perfect family apart.

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Alicia
2008/05/18

I love this movie so much

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Listonixio
2008/05/19

Fresh and Exciting

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Stevecorp
2008/05/20

Don't listen to the negative reviews

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Rio Hayward
2008/05/21

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

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onsetbeachbum
2008/05/22

I do love Charlie David but he always seems to miss his mark as he's once again done with this movie. What troubled me as soon as this movie started was the Father and Son. They both looked the same age, (I actually felt the son should have had the father role). It bothered me throughout the whole movie, who ever did the casting really jumped the shark on those. I've seen many Charlie David movies and I always end up with the feeling that he's holding something back. Once again, if they had an older father or younger son, the movie would have received more stars for a rating, Also, they characters looked a bit too old to pull off the college students.

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FromDecatur
2008/05/23

I liked this movie--the relationship between the son and his friend is a really nice one at the beginning. The mother is a little quirky and amusing, as is the little sister. The father does a good job of showing that odd place in life where one realizes one left things behind due to choices that need to be revisited, i.e., him being gay.I would have rated higher if the ending had felt a little more satisfying. Clearly the son, sister and mother are all making peace with the dad being gay and getting on with life. Our two gay characters seem to be left with a very uncertain future ahead of them and they don't seem to have any reason for optimism. I don't think it had to be a happily-ever-after ending, but I didn't have a sense of closure with the two characters with whom I identified the most. Still, I did enjoy this movie and would recommend it.

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noisyvoice-745-942969
2008/05/24

This really could have been a great movie in my opinion.Especially loved the acting of Thea Gill and Derek Baynham and the plot was (except for all the cheesy details) realistic and well devised.Having said that, here is what really sucks about this movie: Chase (main character, they "gay guy") behaved like the greatest A-hole on the planet during the movie!! I mean, I was really starting to hate him when he treated that girl Christy in the most condescending way ever! It's one thing not to be attracted to girls, but that doesn't give you the right to treat them like trash. First, he meets her at a party where she tries to make small-talk, but he totally ignores her and then he tells her he will grab a beer just to leave her stuck on the couch (all right, it's a party, whatever). But then, he does it again at the barbecue, only this time he tells her to grab a bear FOR HIM, then goes to play football. They never show it, but I wonder how she must have felt when she came back with the beer and saw him being gone.I mean I get what it's like to hear someone say "I wouldn't want my son to grow up being a f**(F-word)" but that doesn't mean he can do it to someone else. He should have no right to complain after treating someone like that! But it gets worse: First he betrays his best friend Tyler (who so far had shown considerable support after his coming out and behaved pretty much as perfectly as you could expect from your best friend) by having sex with his dad (Nathan). But even when he gets caught by Tyler's mother, that doesn't keep him from making out with Nathan some more, not even 20 seconds after Nathan told him that his wife had seen them in the woods. Motto:"Oh, I just might have destroyed your family, f*ck it, let's make out some more." Really!?! So then they make out some more in broad daylight and (surprise!) Tyler walks in. He storms off, being chased by Chase who yells:"It's not what it looks like!" WTF!? In my head I'm thinking: U stupid piece of sh*t! Maybe now is the time to pack your bags instead of running after your best friend who just found out that his dad is gay and you two are having an affair!!! I mean the dad is not innocent either, of course. But Chase just takes the cake by behaving totally selfish and with no regard for the lives of other people.The fact that Tyler in the end says:"It wasn't your fault" is totally beside the point. Of course it wasn't Chase's "fault" that Tyler's dad was gay, but the way in which it was revealed was well set up in order to maximize trauma to the whole family, whose lives as they knew it were destroyed.

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showtrmp
2008/05/25

"Mulligans" is a pleasant enough example of a genre I have a certain weakness for--the gay/rural movie. While the more common urban gay movie tends to be about neurosis, overdramatics, and "witty" banter, the gay rural is generally less pushy and more disarming, with guarantees of pretty scenery and pretty male semi-nudity (often cued by nighttime swimming). The danger, of course, is that the director will get lost in the prettiness and forget to tell a story. "Mulligans" barely avoids this trap, although the story it tells is a lot less daring than the writer/star Charlie David apparently imagines. The movie is never actually painful to sit through, but we're all very familiar with the beats of the coming-out drama by now; the twist here is that the "torment" of the two men in question (Dan Payne as Nathan, a middle-aged, closeted golf enthusiast, and David as his college-age son's best friend Chase) is pushed to the sidelines--which is probably for the best, as the astonishingly beautiful David is a hopeless nonactor. (The only moment we feel sympathy for him comes at the beach scene near the end, when he tries to force tears and is clearly in agony from the effort). The reactions of Payne's wife, Stacey (Thea Gill) and son Tyler (David James) take over, simply because they're more unexpected. Baynham starts out giving a flawless impersonation of a slightly spoiled and entitled frat boy (like the ones in 80s movies and their latter-day imitators, such as "American Pie"). Then David, trying to sound casual, comes out to him, and Baynham--shaken, but trying his best to be broadminded--brings something unexpected out of the stereotype. It's a well-written scene, which seems to come from observation and probably reflects the experiences of many gays in the audience. The movies have rarely touched upon the relationships between gay men and their straight friends, which can be more solid and enduring than similar friendships with other gay men--the usual method is to pour on the wisecracks or play "is he or isn't he really straight" games.The actual transgressive act between Nathan and Chase (don't those names scream Harlequin romance novel?) is awfully tame, even by gay rural standards. It's not just the brief vanilla sex scenes themselves--it's that there doesn't seem to be any new physical awareness or tension between the two characters afterwards--nothing breaks loose. Payne just carries on acting stoic and sensitive, in a 1950s soap-opera way, and David carries on posing and reflecting light, while we wait for the contrived scene revealing their affair. It comes even more awkwardly than expected, but at least the film's meditative rhythm gets stirred up, largely due to the exquisite Thea Gill's performance as Stacey, the only character who truly "arcs". Gill initially plays Stacey as a determinedly perky helicopter mom, full of nervous energy. Most of the humor and pace of the first half of the movie comes from her. When someone makes a conversational detour she doesn't care for, she says, brightly, "Okay then" and steers the talk firmly away, like a slightly hysterical cruise director determined to keep everyone happy and active. (It becomes a mini-routine). Once her world crashes down, though, it really crashes--she retreats into herself, and it's a little scary to see what that artifice was hiding. Gill brings a poetic intensity to her stunned silence--she'll really never be the same woman again.

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