Humpday: Good Attempt to make Your Day
‘Humpday’ is undeniably a titillating movie from the directorial genius of Lynn Shelton and is quite a thought-provoking one at that. The reason, it explores the bonding between friends of the same sex.
Here the focus is on two straight men, and there is no element of physical provocation, but what is challenging is the emotional treatment of the various strands of character by a woman director. Worth a watch! Right?
The film is how close you can get with your once best-time school buddy. This is what is to be seen in the lives of Ben and Andrew. These two men grew up together in their college days, but drifted apart with the passage of time and got engrossed with work to settle down with life where friendship was shut in slam book and locked in the casket of memories.
Ben is at Seattle; quite busy to make a picture-perfect living with kind-hearted and his loving wife Anna. Whereas for Andrew, marriage is a faraway cry and he does not want to get chained down so soon. He enjoys his carefree lifestyle and casual attitude towards life and living. Both these men, in their respective arenas were about to get bored if they had not tried out something to spice up their life.
Here is Anna who has never heard about this buddy of Ben, but she was considerate enough to invite Andrew for dinner one night. And what transpires after that is what sets the ball rolling in the movie.
Andrew and Ben make use of the time together and both go to a swinger’s party where they heard about making home-made pornography movies for an annual film festival for amateur photographers called HUMP in Seattle. Both get drunk without any limit and decide to showcase a movie where two straight men are having sex together will be filmed.
After the hangover, the idea of the making the film still lingers on in the minds of Ben and Andrew. They began making plans as how and where to shoot this film.
Making of this film becomes the centre stage of the movie as it is on this aspect that the whole movie rests upon. Ben and Andrew moves toward their entry for the Hump fest. The question that surfaces is will they finally go ahead with shooting of the much talked about film amidst several challenges such as Ben’s marriage with Anna, how Anna will react to it and who dominates whom between Ben and Andrew.
There are emotional challenges too reflected in the movie as Andrew feels forsaken and sad that Ben is not the same person for Ben is finding it difficult to connect with Anna. There are fears in each character. Ben fears what will happen if Anna is hurt with this, Andrew fears of being a poseur and Anna too is scared because she feels that she should not be the reason of any kind of tension between Ben and Andrew.
Anna’s increasing anxiety is felt when she deals with Ben who was adamant with his plans.Watch Humpday to know what happens to the once beautiful relationship shared between Ben and Andrew.
Film: Humpday (2009)
Cast:
Mark Duplass as Ben, Joshua Leonard as Andrew, Alycia Delmore as Anna, Lynn Shelton as Monica
Director: Lynn Shelton
Writer: Lynn Shelton
Rating: 3/5
Also Read:
Premiere of HUMPDAY
Posted on Saturday, July 25th, 2009 at 2:01 pm