Poster Boy (2004)

[6]

A selfish senator forces his closeted gay son to be the poster boy for his re-election campaign. Meanwhile, an AIDS activist plans to publicly ‘out’ the son during a college campaign stop. Trouble is, the senator’s son and the AIDS activist start to really fall in love.

Poster Boy is ambitious in its storytelling, juggling multiple characters and subplots. While it loses focus a few times, at least all the characters are interesting. Matt Newton and Jack Noseworthy (Event Horizon) have an honest, easy-going chemistry as the senator’s son and AIDS activist, respectively. I wish the film were less ensemble-oriented for their sake. Valerie Geffner is endearing as Noseworthy’s sarcastic gal pal and Karen Allen (Raiders of the Lost Ark) makes the most of it as Newton’s beleaguered mother. The film gets more didactic as it goes and settles on an ending that probably won’t satisfy most viewers.

As scattershot and uneven as it may be, Poster Boy features a lot of superb dialogue and some remarkably well-acted exchanges. The film is shot on digital video, which may seem off-putting at first, but ends up contributing a 16mm-type vibe, adding immediacy and verisimilitude to the experience. With Michael Lerner and Ian Kesler.