Ladymol's Review

As I was watching this I had to wonder if the actors understood what the film was about because I sure didn’t. But to be honest, it has Keanu Reeves in it, so I wasn’t that bothered trying to work out a plot, I was just watching him. I’m not sure I’d describe this as a gay movie, despite being about hustlers with lots of “dates” with johns. As many of them consist of weird kink like cleaning wearing a little Dutch boy costume and the like, it’s certainly not sexy in any way at all.

So, other than Keanu, who I could watch watching paint dry, I can’t really say that much about this weird little waste of time.

Cerisaye's Review

I’ve waited so long to see this iconic film I suppose it was inevitable I’d be disappointed.  Quirky would be one way of describing it.  A muddled mess some might say is more accurate. 

The best thing it’s got going is River Phoenix who is outstanding, totally convincing as street prostitute Mikey whose narcolepsy (caused by stress) makes him fall asleep at the most inopportune moments- like with clients or in the middle of the road to nowhere.  Keanu Reeves is very, very pretty, but unfortunately doesn’t have the same natural ability as Phoenix to inhabit a character. It also doesn’t help that he gets to mouth some of the Shakespearian dialogue liberally and misguidedly sprinkled throughout, which distracted from the intensity of the characters Mikey (Phoenix) and Scotty (Reeves).  However Keanu’s emotional distance as an actor serves this character rather well, and he does a pretty good job all things considered.  I think he’s underrated as an actor anyway- though I could be biased cus, like I say, he’s pretty.

Mike & Scott are hustlers in Portland, Oregon, living on the streets or staying in a derelict old hotel with a band of misfits led by Bob, larger-than-life Fagin-like character.  Mikey all alone in the world has nothing but what he earns selling his body.  Scotty is actually a rich-kid rebel- dad is local mayor - about to inherit a considerable fortune when he turns 21 in a week’s time.  Mikey is a messed up boy dreaming of an ideal of white picket fence family life back home in the Potato State, Idaho. 

The film is partly a road movie following Mikey & Scotty as they look for his lost mother in Idaho and then Rome, but also deals with coming of age issues and Scott’s attempts to reconcile his real father and Bob, the man he claims to love more.  That’s part of the problem, because the separate strands just don’t mesh together all that well.  There are all sorts of minor things going on too, like a sleazy German john who appears to follow the boys around nursing unrequited passion for one or both and carrying on very oddly.  An attempt to link Scott and Bob with Shakespeare’s Henry IV and Falstaff really didn’t work for me, with actors spouting verbatim dialogue from the play to no good reason.  Then there are the other hustlers whose stories we hear briefly, like the beautiful boy who was raped and another made to perform acts he didn’t want to by abusive clients. 

All of which takes time away from the characters, Scotty & Mikey, whose exact relationship is ambiguous until a wonderful campfire scene just the two of them together, no gimmicks or tricks, shows that whatever Scotty says he believes, there is more than friendship between these two.  Scott claims he only has sex with men for the money but his earlier tender care for Mikey during his sleepy-times is I think fair indication of feelings he tries very hard to deny.  The ending is open to interpretation, and I changed my mind between a first and second viewing whether it was happy or sad. 

This is River Phoenix’s film.  He makes Mikey so very real it hurts to watch him- maybe shadowed by what we know happened to the actor in real life.  His character is more fully developed than Scott; I would’ve liked less Shakespeare and more Scotty.  As it is we’re left to draw our own conclusions as to whether Scott becomes one of those rapacious clients, rich and successful but needing recourse to vulnerable young men to appease hunger their wives can’t satisfy, or if he takes Mikey and the two of them go to find their own place to belong, together making that family Mikey so craves.