"Men in Love" is an excruciatingly dull film that could potentially be given an "E" for Effort -- and it is an Enormous Effort to watch. A disastrously unappealing leading man (with such heavy eye-liner that he looks like a silent film vamp) is only part of the problem.
First is an earnest but terribly overlong memorial service which is "realistic" in the senses that it's embarrassing if you don't know the deceased, and that in real life people in general are pretty darn ugly. Then it's off to visit gay friends in Maui with the dead lover's ashes. Here our grieving main character immediately begins his healing process by playing messy fruit eating games with a sensitive local man. In fact, everyone in this film is so overweeningly sensitive you want to douse them with ice water. It's unnerving to realize we're meant to take these new-age parodies seriously.
This film was produced in part by "Tantric Films," so it makes sense that the on-screen lovemaking involves a lot of heart-to-heart rocking and breathing and looking into each other's eyes. That's the good part. The bad part is that everyone is always forming into circles and holding hands. And you are there.
If you're looking for some naked flesh, that's here, too -- a couple of cutie-pie extras are on hand to provide some titillation -- but mostly one earnestly hopes the characters leave their clothes on.
