Diagonaldi Very well executed

Cubussoli Very very predictable, including the post credit scene !!!

Sameer Callahan It really made me laugh, but for some moments I was tearing up because I could relate so much.

Kaydan Christian A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

sigmund3 A couple of cute boys is about all there is for this film to hang its hat on -- Jack Baxter as Midget being the best of the lot. The movie drags terribly and the audio is lousy. Acting is wretched and there isn't much of an ending, either. Come to think of it, don't waste your time. I hope to see the Baxter kid doing other work because he's the only bright spot in the thing. Gay cinema BEGS for more happy endings like "Regarding Billy," so why aren't there more of them?The storyline regarding the living arrangements of the girl and her aunt were odd. Very strange, indeed. Not at all believable. And Midget's mother never out of the bed so we could see her face is kinda lame. Surprised she even got a credit at the end. Was she a drunk? A drug addict? WHAT? That was never explained. And the part about no one knowing who Midget's father was is also a mystery that's never explained, either.Then, there's the silly thing about the gay teacher having had sex with Cassidy four years earlier: What TRIPE! I'm telling you, the plot in this yawner was terrible! And the director handled this part of the story so badly, it might as well have been left out. It was supposed to have been the part of the story that triggered the behavior of some of the other characters, but it was dealt with quite poorly!Imagine Cassidy having had an affair with his sexy teacher four years back and then running off in disgrace. But after returning and hooking up with Midget, he walks in on the teacher kissing Midget in the showers. Corny. If that's not bad enough, then Cassidy proceeds to "whip up" on the teacher during the shower scene, leaving him with a broken arm.But in the final scene, we see the same teacher and Cassidy sailing off into the sunset on a ferry. The teacher has one arm in a sling and the other around Cassidy and he's kissing Cassidy on the cheek. While poor Midget is left humiliated and alone on the dock where Cassidy has just tossed him over in favor of the teacher.Give me a MAJOR break!Nobody would DO that! Midget's just too cute and irresistible. And after getting mauled like that by Cassidy, the teacher would NEVER go back to the kid that had beaten him up. Just wouldn't happen. Bad storyline.The only socially redeeming part was that Midget finds the only other gay guy his own age in the film and has sex with him in the bathroom. (Hmmm ... kinda thought they might wind up together.) Gets a "3" for the 2 cute guys.

mccarthyos As somebody who has criticized many badly made American gay movies, I must blushingly admit that Australia has now joined the ranks of the incompetent in his field.The premise of Tan Lines is good, if familiar, and the two boy lovers, played by Jack Baxter and Daniel O'Leary, are effective. In fact, Baxter is perfectly cast as the lovely, attractive teenager and is a reasonable actor. O'Leary is almost as good as the troubled older boy, Cass. Their love scenes are the best things in the film. In fact, without Jack Baxter the film would be a complete waste of time. You really do want him to get his man. Apart from a few good jokes, the rest is appalling. The acting rarely rises above that of a third rate amateur theatrical group.The director Ed, continually misjudges the film's pace, relying on long shots of the surf when he should have left most of it on the cutting room floor and lifted the pace of the film. He mis-casts the brothers Cass and Dan, so that the ineptly acted younger brother Dan is 16 and looks about 23, whilst his older gay brother Cass looks about 20.The opening shot, that of Jack Baxter asleep with his headphones on, goes on and on and on. Why? Surely it can't be so that we can have the joyous experience of listening to the crappy rock music that boys of his type seem addicted to? There are some interesting and quirky moments which in a better film would have been effective. The fact that the boy sleeps with his abandoned mother, clearly in very difficult circumstances, emphasizes the shallow life that many in the film lead. (In a nice touch we never see her, only her sleeping body buried under bedclothes.) The loony aunt of the boy's putative girlfriend (easily the most dreadful piece of acting I can recall) lives a large house almost empty of furniture. What goes on there is bizarre, and again, could have been delicious in a better film.Sadly, Tan Lines is just a badly made, badly scripted, badly acted and overlong film. I can almost guarantee that apart from Christian Willis as the teacher, none of the cast is professional and boy does it show. The last thing this film is is a gem, or anything else of substance.

John Frame It would be difficult to imagine a worse plot, crummier script, sloppier direction or more lack-lustre acting (but I don't blame the actors).Tan Lines pushes the envelope only in terms of what a viewer is willing to put up with in an effort to support queer cinema.There's some very careless film-work e.g. with the reflection of camera crew in clear view in one indoor night shot.No budget is so small that it would excuse what we see here as the final edit.The technical quality of the DVD is particularly low - but I'm guessing it is as good as it would ever get.The storyline is pure farce mixed with a liberal dash of the absurd. The intention is supposedly to tell a gay teen surfer's coming of age story, but the characters are simply not believable - and they're all terminally morose. This film has far too much teen angst and far too little heart.Only "Crazy Richard" gives "Tan Lines" a run for its money as the all time worst Australian film.

ducdebrabant I saw this last week at a gay and lesbian film festival, and quite liked it. It wasn't what I expected at all. I thought we'd have adorable blonde surfers caressed by the bright Australian sun during carefully timed outdoor shoots. The guys are cute, but mainly because they're young and do something physical -- they're not preposterously cute. They're a bit ... well, not vacuous, but limited in their interests. There's no indication that anybody willingly opens a book. The town they live in may have a beach and waves but it's a dreary little backwater where money is hard to come by and people fall into sex situations for lack of much else to do. The kids may be inexperienced and untutored but they're not particularly innocent, and the adults don't seem to be much different from the kids -- just various degrees of Older.The director seems unsure how to go about making a conventional film properly, so he gropes, and ends up making the movie very interestingly. There are establishing shots we don't need, of things that aren't important. And somehow the arbitrariness of that echoes the characters' ennui and drift and cluelessness. The young people are nice enough, and they have real feelings for one another, but their imaginations are so limited that life seems like a choice between (a.) sticking around and doing some kind of poorly paid labor or (b.) going out and seeing the world -- subsisting on various kinds of poorly paid labor. The first place that comes to mind is always Paris, France, and somebody always points out that there are no waves there. Cass, who has traveled the globe, has no stories of doing anything but working in supermarkets. He paints no pictures of his experience. The main advantage the larger world seems to have is that his parents aren't in it, and it's away from this nothing town.The hero Midget (Jack Baxter) is sweet and pretty born loser who shares (platonically and by necessity) a small bed with his slutty mother (we never see her awake, and we only see the back of her head or an occasional hand). He's illegitimate and doesn't know who his dad is, and his big escape is smoking grass and/or putting on sound-blocking headphones and blissing out on rock music. (There's a great scene of a teen party where everybody is dancing to different music through the earbuds of his individual IPOD.) Back from a lengthy exile comes his best friend's runaway brother Cass -- who has fled the shame of being exposed in a homosexual affair with the 30ish local geometry teacher. Knowing that Cass swings that way, and having apparently been attracted to him for years anyway, Midget initiates a secretive affair.The movie indulges itself in a few kinds of welcome whimsy -- Midget's secret summer job is pretty kinky, and Catholic Cass's bedroom photo of John Paul II, and his various kitschy holy pictures and statues, carry on an animated conversation in (subtitled) Italian, with some holy figures criticizing the libidinous boys and others defending them. This isn't the ubiquitous gay coming of age picture. It's really quite charmingly different, and even its crudities (like the trouble they have racking shots) seem to add to its charm. The sky always seems to be overcast, even on surfing days, and the whole gray atmosphere is all too real and familiar. It would probably be familiar even to a lot of 17 year olds in Paris.