Giving a little kick to the teen comedy genre is Gay Dude, which starts out with the rather generic premise of two high school pals, played by Nicholas Braun and Hunter Cope, agreeing to lose their virginity before they graduate. However a little twist is thrown in when Cope’s character announces that he’s gay.
Now Variety reports that husband and wife duo Megan Mullally and Nick Offerman have signed up to appear in the movie, along with Gary Cole and Brian Geraghty. Mullally and Offerman certainly seem to like working together, as they also appear as ex-spouses in TV’s Parks & Recreations.
Offerman is set to play Braun’s father, who discovers his son has been googling the terms gay and seems almost pleased that his son might like men. Mullally will be Cope’s mother, although there’s no news on what she might think about having a gay son (if she’s channelling Karen from Will & Grace, it shouldn’t be too much of a problem), while Geraghty will be her annoying older son, who still lives at home. Finally Gary Cole will play Cope’s conservative father, who like women to be women and men to be men.
Hopefully this will be good, but it does slightly seem like a set-up for borderline homophobia masquerading as a plea for tolerance, along with all the hilarity of straight people not knowing how to act around a gay person. That said, it’s undoubtedly good that a relatively mainstream effort is dipping into the world of gay teens, as normally it’s the preserve of niche queer cinema, where it’s unlikely to get the audience who’d most appreciate it – young gay people.