It’s oddly fitting that one of the best films in recent memory to convincingly portray the ins and outs of male-male relationships is the brainchild of a woman. Lynn Shelton’s (We Go Way Back) new film Humpday may be what some may call a “high concept” comedy, but at its core lies a simple, touching portrayal of two men riddled with insecurities and self-doubt each making one last, misguided go of proving to each other (though mainly to themselves) that they truly are as complex and unwieldy as they’d like to think.
How do they go about doing this, exactly? There’s where Shelton’s “high concept” kicks in. When Andrew (The Blair Witch Project’s Joshua Leonard) shows up one night on Ben’s (Mark Duplass) doorstep looking haggard and seeking a place to touch down for the night, his old friend suddenly finds his quaint, quiet life turned upside down. For all intents and purposes Ben has more or less “settled down”, with a loving wife (Alycia Delmore) and an uneventful day job occupying the majority of his time; Andrew, on the other hand, has spent his post-college days going on random, prolonged sojourns all over the world, taking in the kinds of sights and sounds (and his fair share of exotic drugs) that Ben can only imagine. Despite the inconvenience Ben and Anna welcome Andrew into their fold, and in exchange Andrew regales his old buddy with tales of his travels; they promise to play catch-up while Andrew is in town for an art exhibit. Restless wanderer that he is Andrew hooks up with a few local scenesters the very next day, and drags his reluctant buddy into their fold — and there, playing somewhat “against type”, Ben actually starts to loosen up. He loosens up so much, in fact, that after a few too many beers and in a pot-induced haze he challenges Andrew to take part in a risqué “art project”, refusing to let the issue slide. This project calls for the two buddies to make a porn film together and enter it into a local amateur porn festival (Seattle’s Humpfest, an annual event which gives the film its title). The kicker? They’d be screwing each other in the film, and they’re both “totally straight.”
While on the surface this may sound like a slightly kookier redux of last year’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno, it’s not — though much like Smith’s film Humpday is more concerned with the rocky relationship between it’s two leads than the ergonomics of their risky endeavor. Shelton’s film is — believe it or not — a character study, which thereby gives a potential “out there” film a natural, quiet sincerity. Whereas most people would wake up the next day and try to avoid even discussing the issue out of embarrassment, Ben and Andrew — driven by their own mounting insecurities, themselves driven by the shaky reunion — only press the issue, deciding they must go through with it (ostensibly for the sake of “art”). In reality, they really just want to prove that there’s more to them than meets the eye: Ben wants to show his friend that he’s not some square in a suit, some “white picket fence” nine-to-fiver who’s suppressed the college Wildman inside him; Andrew, on the other hand, wants to show his friend that he really is the kooky artist he claims to be, the modern-day “Kerouac” out to tear down society’s invisible barriers.
Shelton’s film is a comedy, to be sure, but it’s not slapstick and it’s not cutesy — it’s a surprisingly relevant study of human interactions, and not limited just to those between males. As Anna Alycia Delmore gets quite a meaty role to work with, as a woman who reluctantly plays along with her husband’s games out of both love and a desire to not be seen as the “bad guy”, out to shelter her man and keep him from having his fun. Only at the end of the day there’s really no fun to be had — just a lot of awkward rambling and side-stepping, back-tracking while desperately trying to save face. For you see, Humpday isn’t about whether these misguided men will go through with their ridiculous pact (hint: they don’t) — it’s about how and why they eventually need to be honest with themselves and, ultimately, be “real men.”
The fact that even still the film is so side-splittingly funny is really just a cherry on top.
8.5 out of 10