Brad (Anthony Rapp) is like many other lonely 40-year-old gay men looking for love via online dating sites, yet his past puts him in a more vulnerable state than most. Still grieving the recent accidental death of his only child has catapulted his desire to finally explore his sexuality. He practically ignores his wife as he locks himself to use the computer in what was his child’s bedroom to secretly surf the net seeking men.
When he fills in his online profile based on the reality of his boring monotonous life in a snow-swept suburban town in upstate New York he gets no responses at all, so on a whim he glamorizes the details re-locating himself to Jamaica and alters what he is looking to being much more sexually explicit. It works a treat, and the very next day his in-box is full of very hot looking young Jamaican men plying for his attention.
He opts to contact Yenny (Jimmy Brooks) a good-looking 24 year old who, after a couple of face-to-face computer calls, is dropping his pants and declaring his love for his Daddy Brad. An overwhelmed Brad is very soon obsessed with all the attention that Yenny plies on him and becomes so very distracted he can hardly function at his boring job in a credit card call center.
Then Yenny asks Brad for $25 to get his cellphone reconnected, and then next he asks for $50 to buy some rabbits to get a small business growing, which aggravates Brad’s growing suspicion that Yenny is not sincere at all and is just in this realitionship for money. At the same he had created his own fictional story which was based on several white lies that he had spun to the young man just to make him appear more attractive, and cover his own tracks.
It is inevitable that this is never going to end well, and when a panicked Brad jumps on a plane to see why Yenny is not answering his phone after he had physically been threatened by his Uncle during one of his face-to-face calls, it turns out that Yenny had also been spinning his own yarn.
What is virtually a two-hander written and directed by filmmaker John G Young, this very bleak drama unfolds at such a slow pace it seems in real danger of losing steam at times. By the time it reaches it resolution our patience has been stretched a little too far even though what has been revealed is the desperation of two men who want to escape, or at least improve, their own moribund lives.
Rapp and the young newcomer Brooks put in convincing performers, but in the end our lack of real sympathy with their self-centered characters, make this a tough one to really connect with.
Labels: 2017, drama, May/December relationship
