The LGBTQ community’s fascination with gay cowboys long predates Brokeback Mountain the 2005 Oscar Winning movie that made us all fall in love with Heath Ledger. Yet some 15 years later there is still such a shortage of them on the big and small screen so that we got positively excited just about the very idea of Dashing in December.
This is Paramount Channel’s first queer Christmas movie made for them by MTV. We know before we even start streaming that this will be a highly sentimental feel-good movie with the obligatory happy ending, BUT how gay will it really be? It has a good possibility because its written/directed by openly gay prolific filmmaker Jake Helgren whose resume includes so many Holiday movies. Plus one of his stars is the hunky out-gay Argentinian actor Juan Pablo Di Pace from the TV series Dallas.
So the story in a nutshell : Wyatt (Peter Porte who looks like a dead ringer for Superman) is a successful New York City financial planner and a real workaholic. Recently broke up from his boyfriend and estranged from his widowed mother (Andie McDowell) who runs a Horse Farm in Colorado, he reluctantly decides to go home for Christmas for the first time in years.
He has an ulterior motive as he wants to persuade his mother to sell the Farm which he has been financially subsiding since his father died. What he didn’t know that she had employed a handsome young gay rancher Heath (Di Pace) who now ran the place, and who he naturally hated on sight.
By now we know exactly how this is going to play out, asides from secondary plot of Mother fallen for her ex rancher and now neighbor Carl.
Dashing in December doesn’t compare with the wealth of excellent indie queer movies Queerguru reviews all year long But then it’s not really meant too. This mainstream take on how we gays celebrate the campiest of all holidays is way off, but if you accept it as face value it could make a good first date night Christmas movie.
However no gay man watching this would ever be convinced of Wyatt’s sexuality. Despite Heath’s valiant effort there was no authentic chemistry between the two men. We may have been on the fence sometimes about actors playing gay for pay but in this instance we know for sure Helgren should have cast gay
