Signature Move
I'll be honest, I was disappointed with this film. When I read the description, I was like lesbian wrestlers?? Hell yeah. But it just wasn't that great of a movie honestly, I think a lot of it really fell flat. There were some funny moments, particularly the Mom made me laugh sometimes. But mostly, the chemistry between the two characters wasn't really there and there was so little character development, and the funny parts weren't that funny... So I guess I don't have a ton to say about the film.
I do think our conversation in class about coming out and whether we'd date someone who is not out was interesting. I agree that it's never okay to force someone to come out, that should be a decision that they make when they feel ready to do so. Especially because coming out can be a very dangerous thing for queer people, it's especially not okay to force someone into that position if they aren't ready to take that risk. I think the question of age plays into the question of if you'd date someone who isn't out or not. At my age (22), and really just for college age queers in general, people are still in that in between phase of dependence on family–financially, emotionally, for housing, etc–that coming out may not always be feasible. I also think people around our age might still be coming into our sexualities still, and coming out is maybe less pressing... So I think it makes sense that at our age right now, many queer people in the class said they'd be willing to date someone who's not out. But later in life, I think that would change for me. If I was looking to date someone and I'm in my 40s or something, and the person wasn't out, it would be a lot more challenging, especially if we were building a lasting relationship. Because at that point, I'd want to be able to live my queerness openly and surrounded by (hopefully) loving and supportive family on both sides, not having to hide a part of my identity from my partner's family.
Anyway, that was a long aimless ramble with no particular point. I really wish that this film had done more, that it had just been better, because I do think that comedy can be a great tool for queer people to express their stories, but this film just did it kind of poorly in my opinion. Then again, there are sooo many bad straight rom-coms, so maybe it's good to at least throw this queer one in the mix, haha.
I'm so upset. I had a nice long response to your post typed up and as soon as I hit "publish" it just ~vanished~ and this has happened to me like 4 times now. You'd think I would learn by now, but nope c':
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I found the discussion on dating "out" people or not interesting, too. I'm bi, so being "out" doesn't even necessarily mean being in a visibly queer relationship. Adding gender identity and nonbinary people into the mix just complicates the question even more. Me and my partner are both nonbinary, but also both present in ways that people think we're cis, so we're effectively in a straight, cisnormative relationship to the public eye. Being "out" or not wouldn't necessarily change that. yada yada something about the public/private split, you get the idea
I agree that this movie was disappointing and enjoyed our conversations about it a lot more than the movie itself. I felt similarly about Happiest Season, the gay rom-com that came out last year I think. Like I'm glad that we have movies about gay people, and I guess I'm glad that we're adding bad feel-good rom-coms about gay people to the huge repertoire of bad feel-good rom-coms about straight people. I wanted more out of this movie and I think it had the potential to be a lot more fun and indie than a traditional rom-com style. Maybe the rom-com formula will ever be able to create a really good queer/gay movie, and it will have to branch out to something more original to work.
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