As earnest as it is vapid, The Mattachine Family takes an awfully long time to say not very much about gay families and gays with babies. It desperately wants to be both amusing and heartwarming, but is neither. We get all the by-now-standard diverse gay movie stereotypes - the mixed-race lesbian couple, the flaming Asian best friend, etc. It's supposed to be finger-on-the-pulse contemporary, but actually feels depressingly seen-it-all-before. Nico Tortorella plays Thomas the gay husband who is tortured about whether to be or not to be a father. We're clearly meant to find Thomas endearing, but I mostly found him infuriatingly self-centred and Tortorella's performance annoyingly mannered. The notion of fatherhood for Thomas revolves entirely around personal fulfilment, with not even a second's thought given to what might be good for a child. Which left me really wishing he'd get a dog and not subject some poor kid to his emotional neediness. I should have trusted my instincts and switched off when the first 15 minutes made it grindingly obvious where it was all going, but I hung in there, hoping to be surprised. I wasn't.
Review of The Mattachine Family
