Race You to the Bottom (2005)

This movie is the proof that the world is becoming a sick and dumb place

Great movie! If you want to be entertained and have a few good laughs, see this movie. The music is also very good,

One of the worst ways to make a cult movie is to set out to make a cult movie.

It is interesting even when nothing much happens, which is for most of its 3-hour running time. Read full review

The plot is simple. A straight girl and a très camp nominally bisexual boy go on a road trip and have a lot of sex and bicker.The problem with the movie is completely in the writing. The dialogue is monotonous, and not in the least believable. It is some naïve straight person's fantasy of what gay people are like. It lacks humour and novelty. It feels like ordinary people talking just to pass the time.The gay sex scenes are quite Victorian. The characters don't even disrobe. The actual sex is discreetly off camera. The raciest thing you see is a hand on an arm. In contrast, the heterosexual scenes are very in your face. That is cheating and insulting in movie that bills itself about being about gay characters.Cole Williams in particular does the best with the limp material, breathing some life into it.The very plot of the movie echoes that infuriating Christian lie that being gay is a choice and all that is needed is some heterosex to convert even the feyest boy.There is some quite fun music and animated dancing, the best part of this movie, unfortunately a small part.

This review will contain spoilers in general terms but if you do not want to know I give the 2 stars purely for the performance of Amber Benson who somehow manages to make her deeply unsympathetic character watchable.However, that aside the movie is truly depressing. In essence we have two thoroughly unlikable, hedonistic people who are so shallow and self destructive that they are having an affair which given how self-centred they are can't possibly go anywhere meanwhile hurting their boyfriends who for some reason like them. I could almost accept this if the characters learned something from the experience, but the ending seems to hint at the real possibility that they've learned nothing. So we have a very long, depressing 70+ minutes with nothing to show for it. Long travel, no distance.The acting, Miss Benson aside, is pretty bad. Cole Williams simply lacks any charisma as the leading man and none of the support cast come across with anything to raise above woeful in the performance.But the onus of this sad project's failure lies fairly and squarely on the head and shoulders of its writer/director. What is he trying to say about relationships and people in this film? Nothing positive at all, in fact I'd almost go as far as saying the director seems to have a real disdain for people and relationships. Worse yet the film certainly re-enforced a lot of the insecurities and distrust that i have about relationships so it doesn't even manage to entertain. it merely sits in what feels like a cesspool of loathing.The direction is competent to be fair but nothing above TV show, and low budget TV show at that.I'm a big fan of Miss Benson's, and certainly think she is good in this, but the film is thoroughly depressing, lacking either sympathetic characters or any real moral compass or purpose other than to depress people. Unless you feel like watching a film to slit your wrists to, I'd avoid this film like the proverbial plague.

I agree with another reviewer here about the film's decent technical quality, but I wouldn't extend that to acting. Amber Benson is good, actually, but the rest of the cast is pretty much sub-par. I particularly thought many of Cole Williams' lines were read poorly.The story could have been interesting, but the script didn't do it justice. The dialog sounded forced and stilted much of the time. It just didn't ring true, didn't sound like true life. When the plot conflict develops, I couldn't quite see the reason for it. There didn't seem to be anything happening that hadn't happened before so I couldn't understand the characters' reactions.It was difficult not to compare this movie to Sideways. Not that they had all that much in common except the location, but that was enough to have me constantly thinking of how much better this movie could have been.

I found this movie to be quite good. The story was well written and an interesting. The story gives a fresh view to the complex relationships of young people, at a time when the gender roles are not as strictly defined as they used to be. The acting and dialogue were very good, especially the main characters feel very real and alive. The music and the beautiful scenery of northern California also added to the feeling of the movie. I did not like the rhythm of the story, it felt like a long introduction to the the high point that never came, I would have wanted to see how the main characters and their friends reacted to the big conflict in their lives and how they coped with the changes it brought. Also some of the flashbacks felt a bit out of place. Despite the problems with rhythm it is a strong debut for the director.