The Sunday Times (London)
February 15, 1998, Sunday
Not playing it straight
Stephen Amidon
The tricky issues of a gay man being outed may have been kept firmly in the closet, says STEPHEN AMIDON, but In & Out is a fine screwball comedyI n & Out (12) is an “issue” movie that manages to work, despite steering clear of most of the issues it raises. While one might expect a story that deals with homosexual panic and “outing” to be at least occasionally hard-hitting and edgy, Frank Oz’s film, like most of Hollywood’s work on the subject of gay life, is strictly inoffensive. Just as The Birdcage refused to take its homophobes seriously, and Philadelphia could not conceive of a world in which a gay Tom Hanks would receive justice, so In & Out manages to skate through its obstacle-strewn terrain without so much as a stubbed toe.
In it, Kevin Kline plays Howard Brackett, a popular high-school English teacher whose life seems to be as idyllic as his home town of Greenleaf, Indiana. His students love him, his salt-of-the-earth parents live just around the corner, and his devoted fiancee (Joan Cusack) has lost 75lb in preparation for their upcoming wedding. What’s more, a former pupil, Cameron Drake (Matt Dillon), has been nominated for an Academy Award for his gays-in-the-military film, To Serve and Protect.
Everything begins to fall apart, however, when Drake wins the Oscar and uses his acceptance speech to “out” Brackett. (The story’s idea is said to stem from Hanks’s acceptance speech for his best actor award for Philadelphia, when he thanked a gay teacher who, fortunately, had already publicly declared himself.) The good folk of Greenleaf react with predictable surprise, most notably Emily, who has waited three years for a wedding day that now threatens to be turned into a national media circus. Although Brackett strenuously denies the charge, evidence begins to mount against him. His students point out that he is neat, considerate and reads poetry. His friends suddenly wonder why he requested Twinkies for his stag party and organised a Barbra Streisand film festival the previous year. And the steadfast Emily begins to think that her three-year spell of affianced chastity might have a cause slightly deeper than Brackett’s gentlemanliness.Matters come to a head when Peter Malloy (Tom Selleck), a gay entertainment reporter, arrives to cover the story and decides to hang around to challenge Brackett’s claims to straightness. After being ambushed with a passionate kiss by Malloy, Brackett begins to harbour serious doubts about his heterosexuality. His attempts at manliness – demanding stag films at the bachelor party, pouncing on a lovelorn Emily and listening to a self-help cassette on how to be macho – all go awry. Worse still, the school’s bumbling principal (Bob Newhart) hints that his job will be in jeopardy if the rumours do indeed turn out to be true. As his wedding day arrives, Brackett finds himself finally forced to confront Drake’s accusation.
Although that plot description suggests a film that is shot through with issues such as homophobia and self-deception, Oz and the writer, Paul Rudnick, manage to give a wide berth to anything remotely resembling profundity. Far from being a hotbed of Midwestern moralism and prejudice, their Indiana is a cuddly, nurturing place where homosexuality is viewed as a benign abnormality along the lines of having three testicles or not knowing how to operate a combine harvester. Being outed entails a censure no more severe than a few raised eyebrows. The only blatantly homophobic role is given to the amiable Newhart, who clearly speaks for nobody in the community but himself – and he doesn’t even seem so sure about that. And as for Brackett, Kline plays him with such overwhelming self-assurance that the audience is left in no doubt that he will be just fine whichever side of the sexual fence he comes down upon.
What is left is a screwball comedy that is always genial and often hilarious. If Oz and Rudnick cheat the issues, they more than make up for it when it comes to one-liners and zany set pieces. From the moment Drake makes his surprise announcement, the film gathers a comic momentum that takes it right through to the credits. Everything is played for a laugh – even if it doesn’t make all that much sense. During the Oscar ceremony, for instance, three longish scenes from Drake’s film are screened, each so incredibly inane that you realise they could not have been part of any movie, let alone one nominated for an Oscar. The day after being outed, meanwhile, Brackett roots out that mail-order Be a Man cassette – does this mean he harboured suspicions beforehand? And the issue of how the dimwitted Drake is the only one ever to suspect Brackett’s alleged sexuality is never raised.
Such doubts are readily cast aside by the film’s comic verve, encapsulated in Kline’s performance. All you have to do is watch him try to avoid the tape’s injunction against shaking his booty (“Real men don’t dance!”) as a disco tune thunders, and your reservations fly right out of the window. Unlike so many popular actors nowadays – Robin Williams, for instance – Kline can be both manic and dignified at the same time. Even when the script calls for him to clutch a blow-up sex doll while championing Streisand’s performance in Yentl, he never once tries to tap the audience for a cheap laugh. Just as his distinct mixture of charm and restraint helped infuse The Ice Storm with its deep pathos, so this same core quality keeps In & Out from turning into a kitschfest.
Kline is more than matched by Joan Cusack as the fat woman who is only renting her newly voluptuous body. She, too, peddles a winning line in corseted hysteria, especially during the wedding scenes, when she is forced to deal with the whirling debacle while encased in 30ft of taffeta. She also gets to deliver the line that any actress would die for when Brackett tries to defend Funny Lady during an argument – “F*** Barbra Streisand!”
The remainder of the cast get into the spirit of the piece with aplomb. Selleck’s soulless hack who turns out to have a heart of pinkish gold proves a fine turn for this seemingly ageless actor, while Dillon’s dim-but-nice movie star is just what is needed for the story’s catalyst. The dauntingly skinny Shalom Harlow is the butt of several good jokes as Drake’s supermodel girlfriend, none better than when she is defeated by a rotary-dial telephone in a motel room. The film-makers could have done more with Debbie Reynolds and Wilford Brimley as Brackett’s parents, though Brimley does have one great moment when he asks if his son’s alleged homosexuality means he must have an operation. “Hey,” he says after Kline shoots him a flabbergasted look, “I’m a farmer. This is how I think.” It is an exchange characteristic of the film itself – a potentially explosive situation defused by the deft hand of comedy.
