FILM: Straight Up

Writer-director-actor James Sweeney’s first feature film, Straight Up, made a good impression at OutFest last night. The protagonist Todd is endearingly neurotic and OCD, and after having calculated the improbability of his finding the perfect man (his own gay romance version of the Drake equation), wonders if he should make a go at having a relationship with Rory, an aspiring actress with a wit and baggage that matches his. It seems they’re three-quarters ideal for each other, but can they round it up? The dialog is rapid-fire clever, heady and hilarious, and there may never have been more sparks between two people who didn’t feel that spark (at least not since Cat On a Hot Tin Roof). The backdrop for this is the Los Angeles populated by waiter-actor-model-serial-housesitters and the occasional software engineer. The film manages to be simultaneously earnest and irreverent about romance, about LA, and about rom-coms (whose tropes it enacts while parodying). Sweeney and Katie Findlay (Rory) remind me of Woody Allen and Diane Keaton in their best years (if one may be permitted to recall Woody Allen before he was creepy), and other notable actors just add to the party, like Tracie Thoms as Sweeney’s deadpan therapist. Fresh, original, and a delight from beginning to end.