The excitement over Netflix’s first gay holiday-themed romantic comedy has centered in large part on its radical fun.
But other things jumped out at me on my second viewing. Story To be Discreetly happy, its characters sip a mint latte in a winter wonderland devoid of anti-gay bigotry. Still, there are occasional reminders of the social challenges – navigating closet discomfort, grappling with the isolation of small areas – that have long plagued the eccentric. . These disparate classes together make “Single All the Way” an emotional film.
The plot goes like this. Peter, an overworked social media professional in Los Angeles, is determined to evade judgment from his family about his single status. How did he intend to do that? By asking my best friend to pretend to be my boyfriend. Nick (Philemon Chambers), a children’s author, reluctantly agrees to this plan, and the two fly to snowy Bridgewater, New Hampshire, to spend the holidays with Peter’s family.
By the time the cameras were even rolling, Peter was out with his parents and siblings, who just wanted him to fall in love with the man of his dreams. (A well-meaning opposite-sex ally, Carole is reading a book about “LGBTT,” which she mistakenly and humorously puts it, so she can support her son.) Absence is a plot point. Stories reduce wardrobe anxiety.
The complexity of closed lives
As warm as “Single All the Way”, however, the film contains meaningful reminders of the disintegrating world Peter and Nick have left behind.
Let’s break up appears early in the movie. Nick, who subsidizes his burgeoning writing career as an assistant for TaskRabbit, was installing Christmas lights at a client’s home when he discovered that the client, a woman, married – Tim, Peter’s boyfriend.
“You are a liar and a cheater!” Peter explodes after learning about Tim’s trickery. “You’ve been lying to me for almost four months and to your wife for years and to yourself – no, you know what? I’m not going to judge any of your journeys. That’s not what I do. I’m looking, and I hope that you never do it to anyone else again.”
A similarly influential scene comes a little later in the film. Peter and James are on their first date when the former asks the latter, “Why do you live in this town?” It seemed like a throwaway question, something anyone would ask for casual conversation. But I suspect that the question has a distinct resonance for odd viewers.
Even James acknowledged this fact when he told Peter that the gay-dating app radius in Bridgewater was “a joke.”
The power of the duel meaning
Perhaps no other installment of “Single All the Way” better illustrates the ability to work in more movies than a dark comic book scene where Aunt Sandy (played brilliantly by Jennifer Coolidge) agrees to let Peter and Nick help her with the Christmas pageant she is directing.
