Family Fundamentals (2002)
At 75 minutes, "Family Fundamentals" is painfully
long. Perhaps it is because the subject matter is so
tired and reflected so much better in other documentaries.
The subject here is gay people with strict, religious
parents. But instead of focusing on some new aspect
to this story, documentarian Arthur Dong (stop with
the jokes already) just plows through the subject as
if it were new.
The focus here is a Mormon guy who was once in
the military (see "The Smith Family" for a much better
gay Mormon documentary. It is awesome), a lesbian mother
with a grown gay son whose mother is a religious leader
that writes books and gives lectures on how to change
gay people to straight, and a guy who was good, good
friends with a rabidly homophobic politician named Bob
Dornan.
So the Mormon guy is a real sad sack. He's cute
but, in the film anyway, he's so wrapped up with his
families feelings about him (his father is a Mormon
bishop) that he is almost debilitated. You want to just
grab him and shake him and tell him that his family
is like a cancer. He should just cut them out of his
life and go on. It's like a bad marriage, you hope you
can remain friends but it is impossible. Just tell your
mom and dad to fuck off, get an unlisted phone number
and go on with life. For God's fucking sake.
The religious lady who writes books and works within
her church to minister to parents of gay children will
die soon anyway. She may be dead by now as most of this
was, presumably, filmed a couple years ago. Her family
has wisely just left her alone to die. They were smart.
I will give this segment of the film credit for being
pretty well balanced but the old lady's insight to homosexuality
is based on antiquated notions. No one thinks much like
that anymore anyway. It's a real yawner.
And the politician's friend. It is established
that he was like a son to bob Dornan and then came out
and eventually they fell apart. It's stupid. This isn't
even a real family. And the gay guy is a gay Republican.
Gay republicans make me ill. They are a bunch of self-hating
fags. They are useless to me. I wouldn't hang out with
one in real life, why would I want to hang out with
one on film for an hour?
"Family Fundamentals" is poorly made, poorly edited
and full of faux emotional hoo-hah. I hated every fucking
minute of it. The score by Mark Adler was nice but other
than that it was yet another one of those pedantic gay
documentaries about how great we are and how wrong they
are. In other words, another gay documentary that preaches
to the choir. What a waste of time.
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Card
Content:
F
Completeness: F
Cinematography\Lighting: F
Special Effects\Make Up: F
Music: A+
Final
Grade: F
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