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People often mistake siblings Gray (Heather Graham) and Sam (Tom Cavanaugh) for a couple, because besides living together they’re just so compatible, enjoying the same things since childhood and… well, they seem just “meant for each other.” So they decide to each look for their soulmates. In the park, they stumble upon a newcomer to New York, a scintillating, California-tanned woman named Charlie (Bridget Moynahan). Over the weekend Sam proposes marriage to Charlie and Charlie accepts. Sam is delirious, and invites Gray to Las Vegas for the wedding. Gray tries to talk sense to her brother, dumping the idea of a whirlwind courtship, but Sam’s euphoria prevails and she agrees to be the bridesmaid. Gray and Charlie actually hit it off well, and on the eve of the wedding, after a bubbly girls’ night out on the town, do the unexpected: their goodnight smack turns into a passionate lovers’ kiss. Gray is upset by her discovery that she’s gay, and from here on, life will never be the same.
Gray Matters has a good cast, but one may wonder why such effective actors would take on such roles in a movie that tries hard but fails to be sensitive to the very issue it hopes to promote: acceptability of homosexuality. The otherwise plausible plot is rendered ludicrous by the presence of too many coincidences which may be acceptable in a TV sitcom but which do not convincingly reflect real life as a full-length film like this attempts to show. Cavanaugh’s character as the well-balanced Sam is in direct contrast with the hyperactive character of Graham which, by any standard, is a caricature of soul coming to grips with its baffling gender orientation. Despite his laughable role, Cumming as the sympathetic cabbie Gordy delivers fine perforformance; so do Spacek and Moynahan. Editing is good, and the costumes are good-looking, but one gets the feeling that director Sue Kramer wanted to say so much she stuttered through it.
Gray Matters is supposedly a romantic comedy but there’s nothing comic about the obvious way the movie tries to scream that it’s okay to be gay. There’s a tinge of rebellion in the character who fears she might be gay but who couldn’t come out of the closet for fear of rejection. The movie with its happily-ever-after ending makes a mistake by saying all it needs to live with one’s extra-normal sexual preference is the ability to bring it out in the open. Being honest with oneself about it is no doubt a good beginning but it’s only a beginning; what about the struggle that follows? Gray Matters, in spite of its chatty though tearful confessions, is incapable of a profound analysis or elaboration of the issue of same-sex love, and in fact trivializes it by using comedy as its megaphone. Impressionable viewers could be misguided regarding homosexuality by arguments mouthed by the characters in this movie. There’s more to gay than being gay about it—but that, Gray Matters leaves in the gray area.
(Date Reviewed: 27 April 2007)
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