Saturday, March 24, 2012
DRAMEDY
Todays 50 Gay Favorite Film is number 19
Noah's Arc: Jumping the Broom (2008)
This is the last feature length episode of one of the most popular gay soap operas, Noah's Arc which lasted two seasons, with this film an experiment to see if the show would be renewed. The feature met with some success but evidently not enough to warrant restarting the series.
Basically the "arc" (Noah is a film writer) is about the lives of Noah and his small group of friends and family.
The series and the film challenge several hurdles. Everyone is gay with a sample of most every stereotype (not a bad thing at all) and, moreover, everyone is black or hispanic or, as it turns out for Noah himself, a multiracial. No anglos. Good.
It is a dramedy in the sense that there are some great lines and there is comedy but the proceedings are fraught. But fraught in a good sense in that many many gay issues are explored such as HIV, gay marriage, adoption, fidelity or not, issues that confront gays routinely. Invariably, the wisdom of the series was educational. One of the regular friends works in a gay clinic so often has the correct answers.
I loved this film as, obviously, many gay people did. For a television remake to be #19 in a gay favorite film listing, to say nothing of being black and gay, is a testament. It has some pretty heavyweight competition in the other 49.
The story line is that Noah and Wade come to Martha's Vineyard to get married at Wade's family home. The friends come along.
Many of the complications of their lives together arise for review and resolution in one drunken bachelor party night.
It is very nicely done and quite satisfying. I can imagine that had I been involved with series from the start, I would be totally knocked out by this meta-resolution. They did not know that they were to be cancelled and so a lot of stuff was hung up and unfinished.
One advantage here is that the cast has been playing together for two years and the ensemble work is quite engaging. I found myself a little annoyed at some of the banter and chit chat but then realized that I had been swept up in the drama and the comedy and had suspended judgement.
Spoiler: The wedding is wonderfully done and is as teary as the real thing.
I think that I may rent the series just to see the prequels and then finish with this as a finale. That would make it a 5 out of Netflix5.
