Striving for naturalism while pivoting its action around a
preposterous conceit, Humpday locates
truth mostly on the margins of its too-cute-for-school story. Ben (The Puffy Chair’s Mark Duplass) is a
married homeowner trying to have a baby with wife Anna (Alycia Delmore). His
Seattle domesticity is rudely interrupted when college friend and free-spirit
world-traveler Andrew (The Blair Witch
Project’s Joshua Leonard) unexpectedly shows up on his doorstep in the
middle of the night and, a day later, invites him to a party at a house of
hedonism (the front door reads “Dionysus”). There, after many drinks, the two
decide to enter an upcoming amateur porn festival by making and starring in a
film whose hook will be two straight guys having sex. It’s a premise
practically begging to be dubbed boundary-pushing. However, despite Ben and
Andrew’s copious man-on-man hugging, basketball-wrestling, and endearing use of
the word “fuck,” Lynn Shelton’s central narrative device plays less like a ribald means of exploring the boundary between hetero and homo male
camaraderie than as a gimmick that could be replaced by countless other dares
and, thus, seems to have been chosen primarily for its maximum titillation
potential. In a superb morning-after scene, Ben and Andrew’s decision to go
through with their porn plan is revealed to be driven by a case of
I-won’t-back-down macho pride and ego, with both men compelled to make smut as
a means of both living up to their own (phony, idealized) notions of self as
well as rebutting the other’s stereotypical conception of themselves. Boasting strong lead performances, Humpday’s
occasionally acute depiction of male psychology (specifically, maturation
anxieties) is matched by its pinpoint portrait of marital dynamics,
highlighted by an opening scene in which Ben and Anna both opt for sleep over
sex. Yet such insights are tethered to a tale that’s not only
impossible to swallow and too satisfied with its own tee-hee provocation, but
ultimately devoid – thanks to a climax that goes limp at the money-shot moment
of truth – of anything much to say about sexuality or friendship.
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