Actually, Tom Selleck is not particularly loathsome in In & Out, at least, not more than his character, a sleazy TV-tabloid reporter, is meant to be. He's joined by some terrific comic actors -- Debbie Reynolds doing her sweet-tart Mother schtick, Wilford Brimley doing the gruff old codger schtick, and Joan Cusack and Kevin Kline being their usual wonderful selves (surprisingly, the one true comedian in the cast, Bob Newhart, barely registers).
If you don't know the plot, do you live under a rock? No, seriously, Kline plays a, shall we say, dainty teacher about to be married (to the fantastic Cusack), when a former student of his (Matt Dillon with some BAD hair and a concentration-camp-victim... uh, I mean, model girlfriend) outs him on the Oscar telecast. Hijinks ensue. Small town eventually learns to accept their beloved teacher for who he is, not for who he sleeps with.
The film is funny, though it never really reaches true hilarity, and maybe this is just a measure of how much TV I watch, but I couldn't help thinking of the old SNL skit, "Lyle the Effeminate Heterosexual," which had much the same plot, and wanting to add after every time someone pointed out one Kevin Kline's characteristics that made him seem gay, "Not that there's anything wrong with that." And much of the humor is likely to become dated over the next few years; when Kline wonders about getting a lawyer, his father (Brimley) gruffly tells him, "Make sure you get that Johnny Cochran guy, not that woman." I sure as hell hope that five years from now, we don't know what he's talking about.
Oh, and did anyone else notice that the film places the Oscars and a high-school graduation mere days apart, when EVERYONE knows the Oscars are in March?
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