We’ve come a long way since tough-guy Humphrey Bogart let Ingrid Bergman away in “Casablanca,” only to tell another dude, “This could be the start of a beautiful friendship.” Or have we?
Today, we’re living in the age of the “bromance,” where guys are no longer squinty-eyed, deep-voiced bastions of macho attitude like Clint Eastwood or John Wayne or Bogart were. Now, we’ve got dudes who wear pastels and have feelings, sharing how much they care for each other, even waking up together instead of with the girl they were lusting after in “Superbad.”
Don’t get me wrong, these are mostly hilarious movies in which men are encouraged to be just a bit more sensitive. But one’s gotta wonder how far things are gonna go with the release of the new movie “Humpday,” which is now playing in “selected theaters” and is likely to stay that way no matter how “open minded” our society gets.
The premise of “Humpday” isn’t focused on a workplace slogging through the midweek boredom of a Wednesday in Cubicle Land. No, it’s about two straight guys – one married, one single – who are really great, old friends – so great, in fact, that one of them dares the other to make a porno together for an amateur porn contest where the goal is to break creative boundaries.
Yep, you read right. Two straight guys agree to see if they can team up for a porno in which they “do” each other. It’s definitely boundary-pushing, but what they don’t take into account is how it’ll affect the married guy’s marriage and how it’ll affect both their friendships when the big shoot is over.
“Humpday” actually deals with these topics head-on, and shows how all the confused messages in our anything-goes modern society could conceivably cause two guys who would normally never think about having gay sex to cross the “ultimate line,” Gov. Mark Sanford might say. The movie isn’t really about being gay or straight, but about how does one break out of the boredom of a square suburban life or conversely stave off the sadness of a life wasted in the pursuit of pure vagabond hedonism?
Yet it comes less than six months after the release of this spring’s hit comedy “I Love You Man,” in which a milquetoast yuppie played by go-to comedy prettyboy Paul Rudd has to find a best man after realizing he has no genuine guy friends. He’s set up on a series of de facto “man dates” to try and find the perfect best bud, only to find him in an alpha-male oddball played by Jason Segal.
By the end of the movie, the two are sharing the wedding, with Rudd and Segal telling each other “I love you, man” more than Rudd tells his own woman – the bride! – he loves her. It’s still a fun movie, exploring what it means to be a “real” man in today’s society, but it’s still hard to imagine The Duke or Dirty Harry ever climaxing a movie with a moment like that.
There’s a place for all these films, if you’re not unduly queasy by the underlying will-they-or-won’t-they premise of “Humpday.” But in an age where the modern action heroes like Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Steven Seagal and Jean-Claude Van Damme are mostly pursuing more artistic movies or consigned to direct-to-video movie hell, a movie buff might wonder when they’re gonna be able to see a guy simply kick ass again.
Then again, maybe Bogey’s to blame for letting the girl go and telling the guy their friendship was beautiful. Perhaps that flinty exterior was hiding a sensitive heart all along.