So Myriam and I watched Straight Up a day or so ago together (at my behest), and neither of us enjoyed it — or found it worthwhile enough to do a joint review of it. But, after ruminating over it, I did find that I had some things I wanted to address about the movie, and why it ultimately failed to, in my opinion, actually tackle the issue of important non-romantic relationships in any meaningful way.[1]
The summary from Netflix is as follows, “When a gay brainiac with OCD questions his identity, he enters a romantic relationship with a woman, leaving sex and physical intimacy out of it.”
Note: this review contains spoilers for the entire movie, as well as some candid talk of sex, and some cussing, because I am mad.
I don’t think it’s any secret that Myriam and I are both asexual, and in addition to that, we’re also both on the aromantic spectrum. (I identify as aromantic flat-out, in fact.) As such, when I came across this film on my Netflix recommendations, my initial thoughts were twofold:
- Wow, this could be a really interesting exploration of queerplatonic relationships outside of the typical romance/friendship binary.
- But, uh, wouldn’t the main character’s issues all be solved if he just dated a gay ace man?
Basically, I was interested in the premise, but I was wary of whether it’ll actually handle the subject matter with any delicacy or even aforethought. Like, is the director actually directing this movie with any real understanding of what he’s saying, or are the queerplatonic vibes all just incidental? And, from what we watched, it was unfortunately the latter, and not the former.
But also this movie had a lot of other problems. Like, a lot.
For one — and Myriam pegged this from the beginning, right when I sent them the copy-pasted wikipedia summary — there was a lot of ableism. The film’s premise is just ableist, period.
Since I’m neither disabled nor neurodivergent, I’m not going to talk about this in depth, but needless to say, both of us found that the depiction of OCD in this film was more caricature than reality, treated as comedy fuel rather than with any gravity (similar to how it’s treated in most other media, actually, ugh[2]), and basically used to justify the male lead Todd’s aversion to sex, which contributes to long-running stereotypes of ND folks all being “sexless”/unable to have sex. Yes, some ND folks are ace and/or sex-averse, and that’s 100% valid, but this film does not actually deal with that possibility seriously, or, like, at all. It just continually hammers home the “comedy” of the fact that he’s gay but finds sex gross because of his OCD. [/eyeroll]
Case #1: near the beginning of the movie, at a casting call improv session, Rory makes a sexual assault “joke”, and the moderator points out that this is offensive, with another actor chiming in with affirmation, and even offering to help Rory when Rory alludes to having experienced assault herself (this is never expanded on after this moment). This entire sequence is framed as if the moderator and other actor are being way too sensitive and “weird” for taking this so seriously.
Case #2: during the mid-point of the film, a really awkward and long “meet the parents” sequence had Todd’s (Asian) dad just go off on a racist anti-Mexican rant before then dovetailing into social darwinistic ableism (gross) without missing a beat, with Rory just playing along with it. And the movie frames it as if we’re supposed to find it funny that his dad is racist, but without actually… bothering to take his dad to task for his racism other than a short, one-sentence call-out (of the extremely bland “let’s not be racist at the dinner table at least” kind). Like, I get it, most of us have been in a similar dining table situation with our parents, but you don’t just let this kind of bullshit pass without comment. I mean, if I was in this situation, I’d 1) cut my father off before he goes on his tirade, or just outright leave the room, and then 2) dump the girl who immediately went along with him. Because, no, you don’t just treat racism and ableism as if it’s a “cute” quirk of character to banter about, oh my gosh.
I’d probably find the (clearly unintentional) queerplatonic relationship moments cuter if I didn’t find both of the characters such abhorrent people.
Anyway, all of the above is what added to make this film nearly unbearable to watch (we were both literally counting down the minutes until credits rolled), but they aren’t why I think the film ultimately failed to address non-romantic relationships — or even just queer relationships — meaningfully.
Namely, I don’t think the director started this movie with any awareness whatsoever of queer identities. While he himself identifies as gay, he doesn’t seem to be aware of any sexualities beyond the norms of “gay, straight, and bisexual”, since it’s only in the final five minutes of the film that there’s even any allusion to anormative sexual identities (a passing reference to “heteroromantic asexual” in a whole slew of words — a literal blink and you’ll miss it moment). And even with “gay, straight, and bisexual”, he frequently seems to forget bisexual even exists, since characters constantly put Todd into a gay/straight binary, himself included!
At one point, Todd’s gay best friend even accuses him of “pretending to be bisexual” when he’s “actually gay” and that he’s the “reason” why people think “real bisexuals” don’t exist because he… decided to date a woman? WTF? And none of these words are actually challenged in the narrative, since Todd and his friend just kiss at the end of this scene, as if signaling that, yes, his friend was right. Seriously, WTF. It feels as if the director was trying to preempt criticisms of the film for being biphobic (which it is, imo, no matter how much he tries to cover it up), by making it… super exclusionary instead? Like, these literally sound like gatekeeping arguments, where assholes claim that bi lesbians don’t exist because they are harmful, or whatever bullshit.[3] Sorry not sorry, but there is no “bisexual standard” to live up to in order to be a “real” bisexual; as long as a person identifies as bisexual, they are bisexual, end of story.
So, in general, Todd’s “sexual identity crisis” (his own words) just feels… homonormative. Because his friends continually invalidate his desire to search for a new identity, while he himself remains trapped in the straight/gay binary — claiming that he has to be straight, since he’s not interested in “gay sex”. (Again, there’s no discussion of even the possibility of his being asexual in some capacity, and only a passing mention of the possibility of being bi.) All this is exemplified by the film’s weird-ass obsession with the Kinsey scale, even though that framework has been considered outdated for years by the queer community (and, in fact, might never have been a good measurement, regardless, on account of its bi erasure).
And that’s not even mentioning the normativity of the actual relationship itself.
One of the major tensions that eventually lead to the two leads’ break-up is… the lack of sex. Yes, that’s literally the reason. The movie tries to cover it up by framing it as if Todd’s unwillingness to have sex with his girlfriend is secret proof that he’s gay, but… a lot of moments contradict this framing.
- Todd has never successfully had “sex”[4] with any of his boyfriends previously (other than an aborted blowjob, apparently), but no one has ever accused him of not being gay.
- And then Rory herself is portrayed as being mostly disinterested in sex as well — up until someone mentions it, that is. (Allonormativity, anyone?)
In fact, both of them seemed so perfectly happy with their sexless relationship that Myriam and I speculated that maybe both of them were actually asexual.[5]
Of course, as expected, this framing was not intentional, because as soon as Rory learns that both of Todd’s best friends think he’s gay, she’s suddenly super insecure about him leaving her! And while they initially seemed to make it work, Rory eventually blows up at Todd about his unwillingness to have sex with her! Because now she suddenly wants sex! Without any buildup to this moment whatsoever!
Like, Rory had very valid reasons to be mad at Todd — his friends being assholes as prime ones — but this scene is framed as if she thinks their relationship is doomed to fail because of their sexual incompatibility, and not because of the other factors. And it’s here where the whole film, at least in its exploration of anormative relationships, really falls apart (not that it was ever really together in the first place). Because the film ends with invalidating Todd and Rory’s relationship up to this point. Because Rory claimed that she and Todd had “intimacy issues” when they failed their one attempt at sex — even though they had been super intimate every time they were together prior to that scene. Because Rory outright said that she thought their relationship was “going nowhere” when she broke up with Todd. Because the final penultimate moment of the film has Todd driving up to Seattle to try and win Rory back (by asking for her hand in marriage, in peak heteronormative fashion), and Rory stating flat-out that she no longer loves him. Like, what? You don’t have to be in love with someone to love them, but I don’t think this film understands that.[6]
Sure, the film ends with Todd and Rory sitting across from each other doing a puzzle, with a third joining them (who is clearly Todd’s current boyfriend), but the film makes no effort to address the actual questions it had raised before. Are Todd and Rory in a queerplatonic relationship in the finale, while Todd is dating someone else? Have they decided to try an open, romantic relationship after all? Or are they just close friends? If the movie hadn’t already eroded away all of my goodwill at this point, I’d try to give it the benefit of the doubt with this supposed “open ending”, but with Rory’s last funny ha-ha quip about Todd’s previous attempt to win her back, I genuinely doubt this film even intended to say anything meaningful.
It’s really just… another normative romantic comedy in a sea of normative romantic comedies, and that’s a shame… Or it would be, if it hadn’t also been so supremely ableist and offensive in almost every possible way.
In other words, this was just a plain-old, milquetoast, shitty movie. So honestly? Good riddance.
[1] My main motivation for writing this is that I haven’t seen a single review actually addressing the deep-rooted issues with this film’s portrayal of its central relationship, especially in relation to queer identities. Most reviews have been praise for its “sensitive and funny portrayals”, which I thought were inaccurate at best, and just plain disingenuous at worse. And, I really wish someone had warned me about this, so I could’ve passed on it instead of wasting an hour and a half of my life watching it in the vain hope that it’ll say something meaningful (which it didn’t). ↳ return
[2] I’ve actually seen more than one review mention that Todd, the male lead, reminded them of Sheldon Cooper from Big Bang Theory, which is pretty damning, all told. ↳ return
[3] I hope this doesn’t have to be said, but what’s harmful is heteronormative society and queerphobia, and not actual individuals claiming a sexual identity that they feel mesh well with them. ↳ return
[4] The film also has some weird hang-ups about what qualifies as sex, since Todd (and his friends) devalue his own sexual experience, since he’s never had penetrative sex before. Well, newsflash! Sex doesn’t need to involve penetration. I’m sure that there are plenty of allosexuals (and not even just, like, cis lesbian allosexuals) who have a great sex life and relationship without penetration. Stop gatekeeping sex and intimacy, movie!! ↳ return
[5] I had a mid-movie daydream of how much better this film would’ve been if it had been directed by an actual ace person, and the entire movie was a romcom about two aces who started dating without knowing they were ace and then going on a soul-searching journey together to discover this identity that fits them. Yeah, someone should really write/direct the good version of this movie. ↳ return
[6] Yes, yes, I get that she does smile when he does the, “If you love me, give me a smile,” routine. [/eyeroll] It still doesn’t properly address anything with intentionality, and just felt like a “cute” little director callback to an earlier scene instead. ↳ return
Sincerely, Queers. 