★ | Boys In Brazil
This painfully unfunny dramedy starts and ends with a group of four closeted gay friends at São Paulo’s Gay Parade, one of the largest in the world. As the Parade ends one of them is gay-bashed and after they beat the thugs off, the four make a pact that by the time of next year’s Parade they will all finally come out of the closet.
Outrageously camp teenager Mauro has aspirations to be a Drag queen, something his devout evangelical parents are quick to put a stop too once they catch him midstream trying out his lip-synching routine. Their reaction is to drag around their local priest to exorcise the devil out of their son. Mauro’s rather shy best friend Rodrigo just needs a push to hook up with another handsome classmate, and telling his parents that he now has a boyfriend is rather a non-event.
Mauro’s gay uncle Vicente who was also part of the group is a high-flying businessman who panics when his boss is in town from Paris and insists on having dinner with Vicente and his wife. Vicente’s best girlfriend is dragged into be his beard, but he needn’t have bothered as the boss turns out to be gay too. Who Vicente would have preferred to be dining with is Roger the rather hunky man he helped rescue from the gay bashing incident. Roger, however, is married and about to be a father a second time, and just cannot find the time to reach his part of the pact and come out to his wife. It’s not helped by the fact that his mother-in-law (played by a real-life drag queen!) practically lives with them.
Then there is the angry and rather annoying self-righteous lesbian blogger who sits in judgement of them all and wants to publicly ‘out’ both Roger and Mauro against their wishes.
The cliché driven very lame plot is packed full of old-fashioned stereotypes that seem so out of place in contemporary gay cinema. Even the coming-out aspect of the stories are handled so clumsily, that they are difficult to empathise with.
I saw this one so you wouldn’t have too!
