The Boys in the Band is one of the seminal texts of the gay canon. Written by Matt Crowley, the story shined a light on the lives of gay men in New York post Stonewall but pre AIDS epidemic. The new film takes the ball from previous productions with the added ingredients of a nearly all queer creative team. Every actor in the cast is out and there’s a particular thrill in getting to hear them dive into the lives of their forefathers. But does all the words they get to say matter if the movie doesn’t seem to have much to say?
It’s Harold’s birthday and his friends are in various levels of stress in the process of throwing him a party. None more so than Michael (Jim Parsons) the host of the evening and recently sober. He’s all neurosis and nerves, exasperated when his college friend (Brian Hutchinson) wants to come over for a drink. This might be fine any other time but with a bunch of gay men over and that friend being straight, you can see where the problems could start. Things only get worse once the interpersonal dynamics begin to crack and a drunk Michael introduces a party game that’s sure to bring out the worst in everyone.
Speaking of bringing out the worst, it’s almost an insult to the word friends, to describe these people as such. The Boys in the Band presents a roup of people seemingly made friends by one particular circumstance, their sexuality. It’s understandable, this desire to make community with anyone who could understand you, especially in the face of a cruel world. There’ve been lots of times where I will steer myself towards the Black people in a space solely because of the connection we have racially. Minorities can find solace and community even in spaces that might not always be so welcoming. In that respect this movie is quite an interesting examination of the world we are forced to make when outside forces affect us. It is easy to judge these characters for being friends when we live in a time where maybe being friends with two blistering alcoholics would not be good for our mental health.
However, the friendships in this story are being held together by tape and paper clips and some plot foolery. The Boys in the Band, much like other one location settings, has trouble when things get heated and people don’t leave. There is absolutely no reason why Alan would not have booked it out of the place in any number of moments, let alone any of the guests who started getting offended/weirded out by the proceedings. It’s not even that they want to watch someone’s life become a train wreck, it’s that everyone is driving their own trains towards each other, and for what?
Furthermore, the direction of this story is all over the place. Joe Mantello manages to make the high points of this narrative soar, but too often the moments sticking them together. Real life couple Andrew Rannels and Tuckering Watkins get a dynamic tete a tete about 3/4 of the way through the film as they wrestle with the type of couple they are or aren’t. It’s an important scene, really digging into the specific dynamics that gay relationships can take. However, much of the bite has been taken out as we have established from the moment Larry walks in the door that he had a fling with Donald. The early moments of the two of them are so telegraphed that when the information is dropped into the party all I could do was roll my eyes. Mantello and company can’t quite figure out how to balance their stage chemistry with making a film where the camera can capture everything.
I think this adaptation’s fatal flaw is that it is still the same text. The movie does not seem to have any interest in interrogating itself, a big missed opportunity for a reboot. What exactly were they hoping to show us with this story? It was especially offensive as a Black person that there is a key moment where someone makes an n-word joke and it’s almost just as quickly forgotten. Shocking the audience with something like that with no kind of introspection is a mess, but not giving it further contextualization or a new look is almost unforgivable. The Boys in the Band might be a classic text, but even with this new production, it feels more like a museum exhibit than a vibrant account of the past.