When you watch a gay indie film, you have to accept the fact its going to have a budget smaller than one episode of a TV game show. So if you're expecting Juila Roberts in "My Best Friend's Wedding," go rent the real thing and enjoy its $50M budget. That said, there's a lot to like here. It's a twist on Victor/Victoria with a straight boy pretending to be gay to attract women. We get quite a few delightfully uncomfortable scenes where the straight dude has to put up or shut up. Personally, I would like to have seen this taken farther. If this were a European film, Caleb (Scott Lundsford) would have been persuaded to try gay sex and, perhaps, actually enjoy it--a little. This is probably why many reviewers criticize the film as "homophobic," because it seems to reinforce the notion that M to M sex is kicky. The very, very, very brief nude scene between Caleb and Marc is rather pointless. (I'm surprised the straight actors agreed to do it.) There was a missed opportunity for a very funny (and sexy) scene with the boys getting undressed for the big event--and Caleb being both modest about his own body, while very interested in Marc's. The script could have certainly used a polish, bit it isn't bad. It's main weakness is the ending, which should have given more weight to the Kyle character (Jim Verraros) in the story line. As presented, the story seems to be about Caleb, but with the ending as written, the movie is really about Kyle. So we should have had some foreshadowing scenes to back up Marc's reveal about being a secret admirer all along. That would have taken the movie to the "comedy of errors" level I think a lot of reviewers have expressed disappointment about. Casting is a bit of a problem too. Verraros is BY FAR the best actor of the bunch, but he's relegated to the "incidental sidekick" role for most of the movie. While he's not quite as gym toned as Caleb and Marc, he's got the cutest face and dresses like an Abercrombie model. Hardly the nerdy, unlovable character the script suggests he is. Again, Marc's reveal at the end would have made more sense if the audience had been aware of this earlier in the film. Where was the scene of Marc secretly attending Kyle's concert? That should have been scene one. (BTW, the character the audience MOST wanted to have do the gratuitous nude scene was scruffy A&F boy Kyle).Caleb's family is one note too many. This 90 minute film tries to cram too many characters into a small space. The focus should have been on the characters in the love triangle (well, quadrangle in this case): Caleb-Marc/Marc-Kyle/Gwen-Caleb. Finally, as others have noted, both Gwen and Tiffani are way too cartoonish to be taken as serious love interests. We can overlook this in the case of Tiffani, who is the comic-relief character of the piece, but it's hard to imagine soft-spoken, sensitive Caleb falling for bombastic Gwen.

I could sum up this movie in just a few words: awkward, plot-less, and cliché.Do yourself a favor and don't waste an hour and a half of your life watching this movie. That is, unless you enjoy straight men awkwardly pretending to be gay to win the hearts girls who unrealistically flirt with them despite the fact that the men have declared their complete gayness. This movie was a complete mess.I seriously had no idea where the plot (if it can so be called) was taking me throughout the entire movie. By the end, I was just horribly annoyed.The only remotely entertaining part of this movie was the main guy's ex-girlfriend, who is the only character who actually has a believable personality. She actually made me lol a few times toward the end.Other than that, I seriously hate this movie with a passion. If you want to see a good gay move, rent Trick, Latter Days, or Boy Culture.

I became 100% convinced that I would hate this film the second some supposedly "British" guy opens his mouth and starts talking with an accent reminiscent of Dick van Dyke's performance in Mary Poppins. Others have said it better than me, so I'll just summarise: the idea that the best way into a girl's pants is pretend you're a gay man never, ever made sense. How anyone, gay, straight or vegetable, could find the foul-mouthed, insecure, nasty-minded "leading lady" attractive is something that I will spend the next 15 seconds wondering. The writer could have done something interesting with the idea, and said something vaguely interesting about fluid, non-polarised sexuality, but nah; instead he chose to ram the film so full of stock clichés about queers that it undergoes gravitational collapse. Oh, and, just maybe, having one of the main characters summarise the plot of the entire film only twenty minutes in probably isn't that great an idea.

Eating Out is a warped college sex comedy from up-and-coming indie US director, Q Allan Brocka.Shot in ten days on MD, it's about Caleb, who falls for fag hag Gwen, infamous for turning all her previous boyfriends gay. The way for Caleb to steal her heart? To pretend that he's gay, according to his roomie, Kyle. But the plan backfires when Gwen decides to set Caleb up with her best friend, Marc.The cast includes Scott Lunsford as Caleb, Emily Stiles as Gwen, Ryan Carnes as Marc and Jim Verraros as Kyle. Rebekah Kochan has a memorable cameo as Caleb's kinky bonk-buddy Tiffani.Eating Out is light, pacey and funny, although it's obviously been made on a shoestring budget. In addition, the actors never transcend caricature to behave like real people. In one scene Caleb and Marc get it on, with Caleb only able to do so while Gwen whispers phone sex talk in his ear. It's clear that Marc's being used here, but he barely even notices.If that doesn't faze you, you'll probably enjoy Eating Out, which screens as part of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, running from March 11-21.