Adam and Steve

Directed by Craig Chester

Funny Boy Films

2.5 Stars

So I was, like, watching this movie about these two guys who fall in love and live happily ever after. And then I thought, OH-MY-GOD this is the most original, like, totally progressive thing ever to happen to movies. I mean, when was the last time you could see a gay love story in your local multiplex?

Oh wait, “Brokeback Mountain” is still playing at the Loews in Harvard Square. Oops.

“Adam & Steve,” an independent debut film from Craig Chester, is essentially “Brokeback Mountain” for people who don’t like cowboys. Or acting. Or plot.

Chester, who pulled an Orson Wells as writer, director, and star of this film, has given America a gay love story for the “Love Actually” crowd. If you like clean, beautiful New York apartments and well-kempt men who look like they just walked out of a Calvin Klein ad, then Chester’s film will entertain you… for a few minutes.

After a while, the two-dimensional acting will completely and utterly bore you. There is barely a palpable plot – two gay men in New York City, Adam (Chester) and Steve (Malcolm Gets) must overcome an animalistic sexual attraction to find true love – and nary a trace of dinginess ever creeps into the East Village setting.

The only thing the film does to keep your focus is crack jokes. Chester has a wicked sense of humor, but it appears too infrequently to produce a lasting effect. Instead, he drowns his film in a fictional New York City where gay relationships are the norm and heteros are an endangered species.

Then again, that may not sound so fictional. But the film’s fantasy world never draws the audience in because Chester never commits to the fantasy’s efficacy. Every public display of homosexual affection is accompanied by a barrage of beer bottles from a New Jersey hick or a self-conscious sermon about New York’s gay-bashing epidemic.

Slipping in an out of gay wonderland, “Adam & Steve” can’t make up its mind: Is it a case for more understanding between homosexuals and heterosexuals, or does it want us to forget about straight people altogether?

Bottom Line: Unless you watch “Love Actually” twice a day, skip “Adam & Steve” and instead buy “Brokeback Mountain” on DVD.