Saturday, September 8, 2012

Get Real-A Classic Gay Film from UK

Get Real is a 1998 British drama film directed by Simon Shore, based on the play What's Wrong With Angry? by screenwriter Patrick Wilde. The plot is about gay teenager Steven Carter's coming out to the world. The film was shot in and around Basingstoke, England. Steven Carter (Ben Silverstone) is a sixteen-year-old middle-class schoolboy: intelligent and good-looking, but unathletic and introverted. Bullied at school, misunderstood at home, his only confidant is his neighbor and best friend, Linda (Charlotte Brittain), and his only sexual outlet is cruising the local park toilet. The film ranked number 34 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.

The film was well received by many critics, and subsequently nominated for eight awards, and won six, including the British Independent Film Award 1998. In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Paula Nechak praised the film for allowing the characters to be themselves rather than change to fit in, and praises the treatment of the 'jock' character John as being just as bound by the school popularity game as Steven.

In the Daily Record, Siobhan Synnot criticised the film as being like a "preachy episode of Grange Hill with cardboard cut-out characters" and also criticised the John character for being unbelievable, describing him as "simply a bland fantasy hunk. It's hard to see how this dim bulb is bright enough for Oxford, because all the smart lines go to his smart-alec boyfriend.