“Tru Loved” is a new gay youth movie that suffers from existing in the world of obvious expectations. It’s nothing new, though. When a young, idealistic teacher joins the staff of a rough school with hard-to-reach kids… or a romantic comedy has two leads who begin the movie hating each other… you sort of know what’s going to happen. So, when a young high school athlete enlists other people to defend his closet… well, it would be unexpected for the same character to be closeted by the time the end credits roll.
The movie is about a girl named Tru (no e on the end, of course) who moves from the gay mecca of San Francisco to the horrible conservative area of… southern California? Anyway… Tru befriends the gay students, starts a GSA, acts as a beard for the closeted quarterback, and lusts after a boy in the GSA (but knows she can’t have, since he’s at the GSA, right? Right?!)
There are cameo performances, with Bruce Vilanch (of Hollywood Squares fame) as a famous writer, and Nichelle Nichols (Star Trek) giving a fun appearance as the black quarterback’s seemingly racist grandmother (Can’t you date a nice black girl?”).
I don’t really want to pan the movie, which has a big heart, a positive message, and OK performances (given the limited narrative there is to explore), but everything seems too obvious and familiar. The homophobic football coach. The closeted quarterback who needs to keep his sexuality and love of singing hidden (It has to be a bad sign when gay indies are exploring similar storylines to the Disney telepic High School Musical, no? Of course, Zac Efron isn’t really struggling with his sexual identity there, although my friend Prince would beg to differ).
So, yeah, I don’t have much more to say about this except it is perfectly fine to pass the time, if you like movies with plotlines that wrap up with pretty bows at the end, warm happy endings, and obvious conclusions. Either I’m too picky, or this film was too simple, or a mixture of both, but it wasn’t a film a truly loved. If only it were called kinda liked, or didn’t loathe, I could better play off the title.
