The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy (2000)

This was another late-night-on-Channel-4 recorded film, complete with sign-language interpretter and blissfully few ad breaks to fast-forward through. It turned out to be a forgettable but enjoyable bit of fluff, with a fairly starry cast for an American movie about gay relationships, including Zach Braff (sporting a dodgy blond dye-job), Timothy Olyphant, the dad from Frasier, and Dean 'Superman' Cain. 

It's a couple of weeks since I saw it and there's not a lot I remember about it, which speaks to how good it really was. I don't think it was either funny enough or romantic enough to be subtitled: A Romantic Comedy' though. There were chuckles, and some interesting attempts to comment on gay stereotypes in Hollywood movies (such as gays always dying of AIDs) which were then brushed aside to show gay gym bunnies and drag acts. A nice idea, but without the witty script and well-rounded characters to dispel many gay movie clichés. 

For a gay movie there was disappointingly little in the way of gratuitous nudity or even topless shots! Olyphant's character had a cute love interest, and Dean Cain reminded me how hot he was, but otherwise the sex was written out of the movie, presumably to be more palatable to US audiences, since this appeared to want a mainstream release rather than straight-to-DVD for gay film festivals. It was good, but there have been better gay movies before and since.