AniInterview Sorry, this movie sucks

Actuakers One of my all time favorites.

AshUnow This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

artemis84-1 Picture this: Unhappily single gay professor Brad Jenkins (J. Andrew Keitsch) is approaching the big 4-0 and is going through some serious inner self-evaluation. He is not only single, but also lonely. His best friend Julie (Joan Lauckner), who married his brother, convinces him to attend his parents' wedding anniversary. After a bad night, Brad gets drunk and wounds up in a car accident. When he wakes up, he finds himself back in high school as a young man. However, the big shocker is this: homosexuality is the 'normal' way of living. To solve reproduction, parental partners are set up, otherwise it's all guy with guy, gal with gal.At first Brad finds himself in heaven, and makes his ultimate teen dream come true by dating Roland (Tim Hammer). However, after meeting the unsuspecting young Julie, Brad finds himself more attracted to her. The two soon start to have an affair and thus become "breeders", that is a heterosexual couple, subject to discrimination.This latter part is what I personally found a tad problematic. The movie implies that homosexual chose their sexual orientation rather than being born that way. Up until Brad and Julie's affair, I thought this was an excellent movie that showed what it is like to be the minority all of a sudden; it had great potential to grasp the audience, regardless of their sexuality. The sudden heterosexual twist came as an unpleasant surprise for me, as I found the storyline could have been much more interesting if it would have focused on Brad's homosexuality and how his experiences from the 'past' could change him when he went 'back to the future'.It was also startling to watch the Blue Jean Ball scene when all of a sudden heterosexual couples formed even though moments earlier most of them were convinced that being gay was the only way. It just didn't make sense and from then on it was hard to take the movie seriously.Then of course, in the end Brad does meet his love, Roland, when they go hiking as 40-year-olds. I was unsure about this movie's message. Did it mean to say that gender is insignificant when it comes to finding true love? Or that who we are attracted to solely depends on our environment? Perhaps that we are mere products of our environment? It is unclear.Overall this was definitely an interesting movie to watch, as it showed a new take on homosexuality, and (at least for the first half) provided a unique way of portraying an if-you-were-in-my-shoes situation. The fact that it was a low budget production cannot be overlooked, nonetheless it is worth a watch. Maybe someone can decipher the message.

jm10701 This is such an annoying movie! Maybe there is an audience for it somewhere, but I'm glad I don't know anybody in it.It pretends to invert the gay/straight imbalance, but it does it so unevenly that it ends up alienating gays even more than we are already. The most annoying inequity: the ONLY sex scene, and the ONLY serious kissing (with tongues, open mouths and credible passion), are between straight couples, although in the world being shown gay is the norm and straight is taboo. The kissing between same-sex couples looks like me kissing my grandmother, every time it happens, and it happens a lot because that's how the movie drives home its insufferably heavy-handed message.If in a world dominated by people like me (i. e., gay people), the only ones who have good sex and the only ones who are passionately attracted to each other are the straight minority, no wonder the star switches teams so easily and eagerly. The preposterous, predictable ending, which I suppose was meant to surprise and delight us, to force a smile onto our faces and a tear into our eyes as we left the theatre, just made me angrier.I don't care what point this obnoxious movie was trying to make; I HATED it.

NJMoon Premise? Brad, a 40 year old college professor, gets propelled back in time to his high school years (paging Peggy Sue). The time machine of choice is an automobile (paging Doc Brown). The twist here is that his past is now a world where same sex relations are the norm and being a 'breeder' is considered 'queer'. Unfortunately, ALMOST NORMAL suffers a bit from adhering to it's 'concept' - showing us a world every gay person has dreamt of, where being gay is the acceptable norm. Some of the character and plot energy is diverted to this noble experiment and thankfully, it eventually pays off. Although an indy in spirit, ALMOST NORMAL looks and sounds pretty slick and manages to be quite winning, despite some apparent flaws. The scenes where Brad and his boyfriend go on an 'ice cream' date and where the hunky boyf eventually proposes marriage are genuinely moving and refreshingly real. The convention of having Brad remain 'different' even in his new world is the film's toughest trick and I'm glad to say it works. The performances are capable and except for a few of the smaller roles, the acting is uniformly pretty good. The score and photography are above the norm for this type of endeavor, generally on a par with a Hollywood effort. The direction is a bit uneven, with a few scenes a bit too farcical and others veering toward the too sentimental. But for the most part ALMOST NORMAL is almost as clever and unique a film as Doc Brown could possibly confabulate.

bretlagro-1 A gay man, suffering a mid-life crises, feels sorry for himself, living an "almost normal" life. In an accidental event, he finds himself back in time, at his high school, where being gay is the norm, and being straight is an abomination. I loved the plot and the way it plays out. The acting was marginal. The most believable was Brad, except when he was "supposed" to be older. The other characters fell pretty flat.The "jock" love interest was the perfect vehicle to show that Brad was so smitten with his high school crush and his now accepted love life, that he fails to realize that even in this world, he is not normal, and again he searches to find self acceptance.