grybop Humpday is supposedly about two straight guys agreeing to have sex with each other. Well, yes and no. Let me start by saying what this movie is not about, since both the title and the poster are completely misleading. Humpday is not a comedy - at least not a comedy in the Judd Apatow sense. There are some hilarious scenes though. Humpday is not about homophobia - everyone in the film seems to be accepting homosexuality as one more way to express your sexuality, nothing more, nothing less. Even when the wife of one of the main characters is informed of his intention to have sex with his best buddy, not once does she call him anything derogatory. She may be upset, but doesn't even wonder if he's gay at all.So what is Humpday about?It's about being 30+, settled down, conformed with society's norms and accepting the restrictions set within a heteronormal relationship or marriage. Or about being 30+ and living life like there's no tomorrow, enjoying yourself to the fullest, but also having that annoying little voice inside your head reminding you you're irresponsible and incapable of long-term commitment. These two worlds clash in the movie. When, half-jokingly, the two friends challenge each other to film themselves having sex for the sake of art, each of them has different lines to cross - apart from the obvious one, and apparently the one that matters the least: that they're straight. Ben feels the need to step outside his comfort zone and explore his "other sides", not necessarily sexually. When the chance comes to meet new people, smoke some pot and relax away from his wife, he grabs it like a man in the desert finding water. Andrew sees the challenge to hump his buddy as a chance to finally see a project to an end and prove to himself he's capable of doing something bigger than him. At the end, it doesn't matter that they're both male, though. It could have been any woman they're not attracted to instead. The fact that they're best friends is their biggest obstacle, as it becomes more obvious in the final scene. The plot is clever enough to keep the viewers interested with its "will they or won't they" premise, steering away from many clichés you'd expect to see in such a movie. The dialogue is extremely well-written and takes the viewer away from the fact that he's watching an ultra-low budget, dialogue-driven film. The acting is amazingly good as well, so much it feels like there was no script in the first place - that's how naturally the lines are delivered. Little does it matter whether Ben and Andrew do each other in the rear in the end. The movie gives you enough food for thought for a good while after the credits have rolled. These are characters that will stay in your head for a long time.

Turfseer Humpday is a clever and original story about two friends who re-establish their relationship after not seeing each other for quite some time. Mark is a transportation engineer living in Seattle, married to Anna (Alycia Delmore) who is hoping to get pregnant and start a family. One night at about 1:30 in the morning while the couple is sleeping, Mark's old college buddy Andrew (Joshua Leonard) pounds on their door and wakes Mark and Anna up. You're expecting Mark to be annoyed that his old friend has barged in on them without calling beforehand, but surprisingly Mark is ecstatic that Andrew has reappeared in his life.Andrew is a perennial Bohemian type who would have fit right in at Woodstock circa 1969. Mark invites Andrew to stay over and he gladly accepts. We find out that Andrew is just back from Mexico but we're wondering how he supports himself. It turns out that Andrew apparently doesn't need a lot of money to get by as long as he has other Bohemian friends who'll support him. He gets himself situated in a house with the moniker 'Dionysus' prominently displayed over the front door (that should be a clue that farcical happenings are about to transpire). The house is rented by a Lesbian couple, one of whom is Monica played by the film's director, Lynn Shelton (Later Andrew puts the moves on Monica only to discover that she's thoroughly gay and doesn't want to have sex with him).Anna is about to prepare pork chops for dinner for Mark when Andrew calls and invites his buddy over for dinner at the 'Dionysus' House. Mark accepts, expecting to stay only a few hours and return for dinner with his wife. But Mark and Andrew end up getting stoned and having such a great time together that Mark loses track of time with Anna ending up eating dinner alone. While at Dionysus, the upcoming Humpfest is discussed—an artistic porn festival that invites entries from amateur filmmakers. Mark wants to prove to Andrew that getting married and settling down has not dampened his spirit for adventure nor made him into a prude so he suggests they make a film together for the festival with both of them having sex together—the novelty being that these are two straight guys willing to have 'gay sex'.There is of course one obstacle to going through with their plan and that is of course Anna, who Mark realizes might not exactly go crazy over the idea. He promises Andrew that he'll discuss it first with his wife but loses the nerve when he assumes she'll be hostile to his proposal. Later, while Andrew is having drinks with Anna alone, blurts out their novel plan of 'male bonding'.Although initially hostile, Anna eventually comes around to accepting the idea, allowing Mark to go ahead with the tryst, as she wants him to "get it out" of his "system". She even confesses that she made out with some guy while visiting a friend while they were married. Finally, Mark and Andrew meet at a motel with a video camera in order to film the sex act together. It turns out that deep down they feel awkward about the whole thing and over-intellectualize the experience by over-analyzing their feelings in front of the camera. The decision is made not to go through with the project and both Mark and Andrew agree after much deliberation, that they're "okay" with their decision.Writer/Director Lynn Shelton encouraged the actors to improvise most of the scenes from her script which was designed to be only a general blueprint. Mark Duplass and Joshua Leonard end up being highly entertaining as the two buddies who try to outdo one another in an amusing game of one-oneupmanship. It's funny because you don't expect the more conservative character Mark to end up outdoing his free-spirited chum in the game of 'who can be more tolerant'.In a sense, Shelton's story is a plea for tolerance as she takes the taboo subject of gay sex and has two heterosexual characters demystify it into something that is wholly non-threatening. I think most tolerant gay people will pick this up but there will always be a very small minority of 'militant' gays who will be offended since in their 'all-or-nothing' universe, the decision of the straight characters not to have sex is interpreted as a complete rejection of the gay lifestyle. Of course that is not the intent of the filmmaker, who is quite obviously a person who supports gay people.With the breezy banter between the two principals as well as the filmmaker's commendable plea for tolerance, Humpday stands out as a refreshing change of pace in the indie world chocked full of predictable melodramas and comedies peopled with implausible caricatures. Ultimately, Humpday wins no awards as a film of 'great ideas'--but fulfills the cardinal rule of farce: one is permitted the outrage without the consequences.

Movie_Muse_Reviews To set the record straight -- maybe pun intended -- "Humpday" is not a true gay and lesbian film, nor is it a "bromantic comedy" with homophobic slapstick. Lynn Shelton's film is simple: what if two best heterosexual guy friends somehow got it in their heads that filming themselves having sex with each other would be a good idea? "Humpday" explores the bond between men and the difficulty they have with intimacy, particularly when its sexual in nature.Ben (Mark Duplass) is a recently married man planning on starting a family when his old best friend, the free-spirited Andrew (Joshua Leonard) shows up at his house in the middle of the night. At a party, the two learn about an amateur porn competition and come up with the idea that two straight best friends having sex with each other would make a real artistic statement. Although they laugh at the idea the next day, their machismo of not wanting to back out in addition to some internally buried needs they feel the film would fulfill turn the idea into a serious project.The most prominent feature of "Humpday" is its amateur documentary film-making style. Shelton is filming like she's the camerawoman in the Real World house making a reality show. There's an impressive realism with the dialogue and the way the characters relate to one another and it only lets up in a few spots. The story does a great job convincing you that this could theoretically happen even though it never would. I don't think under any other set of circumstances other than the ones Shelton has imagined would something like this legitimately take place. Duplass, Leonard and Alycia Delmore as Ben's wife do their best to convince you otherwise. They really seem like legitimate people in real-life relationships.At many points in the film, Ben and Andrew address why they're doing this. It's an important question to the film and one that should also be asked of Shelton too. At times "Humpday" is supposed to be funny but there's a lot of it which is meant to be taken seriously. You start to wonder yourself -- namely if you're a straight man -- if you'd be able to go through with it which is one of the film's great strengths. At other times, you kind of wonder why the issue has been blown up this much in the first place.I think Shelton made this film because she wanted to explore the male bond and this was really the way to pull and push at it and manipulate it: by creating these circumstances. The film is surprisingly perceptive with some interesting insights into relationships but it gets a bit too hung up on two guys talking about having sex with each other and will they or won't they."Humpday" is an LGBT film in the sense that it comes from a very sexually open and progressive mindset. There are a couple women in the film for example, one played by Shelton in fact, that are in a relationship but one is into Andrew as well. In that sense LGBT characters are a significant part of the film, but they mostly add to the discussion of sexuality and relationships as seen through these two best friends. Lose any expectations that the poster art and brief summary provide and "Humpday" will leave you pleasantly surprised.~Steven CVisit my site http://moviemusereviews.com

MisterWhiplash People have been throwing around the term 'Mumblecore' to describe a recent spat of movies by the likes of Lynn Shelton, Kelly Reichart, and the Duplass brothers (one of whom, Mark, acts in this movie) and some throw it around like it's a bad thing. While I've yet to see the bulk of the films as part of this quasi-movement of completely improvised-dialog films (one I have seen, Wendy and Lucy, is terrific), I should point out about a concurrent trend in television. Rest assured, some of the best comedy shows on TV right now- namely The Office and especially Curb Your Enthusiasm- go along on the beat of just having a rough outline, albeit a firm structure, to go with the story, and letting the actors take the scene where it needs to go. And as comedy, it's important that it's funny, and rest assured Humpday is funny as f*** (pun intended), but it also has to have a level of reality that you can just feel right away. Humpday has that, and it's refreshing.It's a simple premise, though anything but in its execution of human interaction: two old friends, Ben and Andrew, meet again after Andrew's been away with his art-type friends for a while, and one night when Ben is over at Andrew's friends party a sort-of dare is made by Ben, that he and Andrew will do a gay porno together for an upcoming porno movie festival called Humpday. Aside from the fact that the two men are heterosexual, Ben is married to a nice but slightly rigid Anna, who wants to get knocked up sooner rather than later. From there the film is a series of awkward scenes- some more than others, some leading up to it in that cringe-worthy style that, if hooked into the film, will have you laughing and uncomfortable- that leads to that wonderful climax at the hotel room.There are detractors for both the movement of mumblecore in general and for the film; some critics and audiences find the whole premise, as it plays out, unbelievable. Yet, perhaps that's part of Shelton's point: following these characters in their (ill)logical progression is part of what makes it satirical on the nature of men and relationships and friendship, but importantly as well it's natural-dialog style is perfect for how people would react to the situations. And for those who really admire improvisational comedy, those awkward little moments and beats taken or things truly surprisingly said, Duplass and Joshua Leonard knock it out of the park. They're perceptive to how really close friends who do love each other- as 'friends' mind you- would react when putting themselves, in a kind of masculine sense of who they are, into this situation. On top of this there is also some really good work from Alycia Delmore as Ben's wife, who reveals in maybe the best scene of the film (when she gives her approval with a caveat) how she views Ben's free-will in their marriage. In short, for me, Humpday is real and raw without losing for a second how to make a scene uproarious. It shares the cringe-comedy of the genius 'Curb' while also eschewing the more trying raunch of Apatow productions or, more recently, The Hangover. And as a bonus, its low-budget and small cast and chamber set-pieces don't give away really that it's all made up dialog and interactions. I'd be interested to see someone's reaction going in on the film cold, knowing only that it's a comedy about two guys planning on having sex together for an amateur porn. At the moment, it's the comedy sleeper of the year, one that will find (or maybe lose) its audience by word of mouth.