Duralde places "Chuck and Larry" on a continuum with such ground-breaking films as "Philadephia" and "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner?" as well as other consciousness-raising comedies like "Tootsie," where Dustin Hoffman plays a man impersonating a woman, and "Soul Man," where C. Thomas Howell plays someone white passing for black.
I was right with you, Alonso, till you got to "Soul Man"...
This approach can be tricky, of course – feminists didn't complain about Hoffman playing a woman, but many people were up in arms over the idea of Howell donning "blackface," even if it was with the best of intentions.
Well, yeah. I think you also have to allow for the fact that "Tootsie," although it's got one or two plotholes big enough for a basketball player to walk through, is a very good movie. Whereas "Soul Man" was a bush league comedy trying to pass as important.
But then again, Duralde sends me spiraling into the corner grappling my own depression, with the final paragraph of his review of the movie.
...movies that are this stupid about gay life, made by straight people, exist as object lessons of why it's so very important that queer artists tell our own stories from our own point of view. Because if we leave it to the heterosexuals, obviously, they're going to get it all wrong.
Obviously.
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