I was very excited to get this DVD in the mail last week. So much so that it made waiting to find time to watch it very difficult. It is one of those movies that I knew was going to be good, but I didn’t know how great it would end up being until I actually sat down and watched it with fresh eyes.
What movie could possibly have me this excited? Well, it wasn’t some summer blockbuster or anything Hollywood has produced that I may have missed. It’s actually an independent film called Were The World Mine.
The set up is rather simple. Token gay student Timothy, played by Tanner Cohen, attends an ivy league private high school has a crush on the star jock of his class Jonathon, played by Nathaniel David Becker. He’s out, and because the entire town is mega-conservative, he gets picked on. Jonathon, while he has a girlfriend, is the only one that defends Timothy when he gets beat up on a daily basis. Also coming to his emotional aid is a drama teacher played by Twin Peaks actress Wendy Robie. She is probably the only encouraging soul Timothy has ever known, as she constantly pushes him towards the arts and performing on stage through her Shakespeare class she teaches at the school. Outside of school, Timothy has only two good friends. Frankie, a tom-boy rocker girl played by Zelda Williams, and her extremely horny boyfriend Max played by Ricky Goldman. Both are rather accepting of Timothy’s sexuality and see nothing wrong with it. Timothy’s mother, played by Broadway’s Judy McLane, does have a problem with it as it is preventing her from getting any kind of employment in such a narrow-minded community. It is so difficult for her that her only job she can get is as a door-to-door make-up sales woman for the richest women in the town played by All my Children’s Jill Larson.
Whew!! What a cast!
So what’s the story? The school is holding the annual Senior Class Play, and this year they are doing A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream. Because it is an all-boys school, the drama teacher is delighted that they will be performing the play as it was performed in Shakespeare’s time. (i.e. men playing the women’s roles) She casts Timothy as Puck, which for those who are not familiar with the play is the most popular of the fairies that reside in the mythical forest. While rehearsing and learning his lines for the play, Timothy stumbles upon a working love potion hidden within the script. So, naturally, he uses it on his crush Jonathon. But as a result, religious tensions start to flare up and conflict ensues between the newly-converted homosexual and his sudden boyfriend that eerily runs a parallel course to the actual Shakespeare play.
There are some comedic moments as well as some really difficult moments to get through, most of them involve the school’s coach who was made to fall in love with the school’s dean when Timothy went crazy with distributing the love potion. But these moments are few and far between and only serve to break up the drama that the story actually centers around.
Interestingly enough, this film is a musical. The songs flow in and out very organically, with one exception going to the bridge between the second and third act of the film. Most of them actually happen in Timothy’s mind, as it is established very early on in the film that he tends to day dream in musicals. Gay stereotype? Could be. By themselves, the songs are very pleasant and hypnotic in tone. If the voice of the singer is actually Tanner Cohen singing, then someone give this kid a contract. Every song this guy sings in the film is gold. Once you hear his voice, I dare you to find a way to get it out of your head within 15 minutes!
The only major distraction for me was the quality in production. It looked as if they blew their budget on all the musical numbers, as those have the best lighting and best image quality overall. They must have sacrificed some of that budget on the dancing, because the choreography is rather bland. When the film isn’t in musical mode, it looks as if it was shot by a sophomore film school student. What I mean by that is that there is attention to lighting and frame composition, but it is done in a way that clearly shows they were on a budget.
I, personally, loved Wendy Robie’s character and how director and writer Tom Gustafson evolved her character throughout the film. She starts off as this hippie art teacher that works on the level of the cliché, but as the story progresses and the parallels to the Shakespeare play become more and more pronounced, you get this odd feeling that she is more than what she appears. Those who are fanatical about anything Shakespeare will love the final plot twist with her character. I know I did, and like most of the students in the high school in this film admit time and time again, Shakespeare doesn’t make sense to me.
Even if you don’t like musicals, this one doesn’t beat you over the head with song every scene. Even if you don’t understand Shakespeare, this film does a better job of telling you what happens in A Mid-Summer Night’s Dream to where you can pick out the parallel plot points. And even if you don’t like Gay Cinema, at the very least this film doesn’t beat you over the head with idea of gay rights and a director’s political agendas. It’s just a very fun film.
I mean, I've watched this film at least five times already and is saving my pennies to get the soundtrack form iTunes! I enjoy it that much!
