Fridae

Have you ever watched a buddy movie starring two straight male actors and wished they would just… well, f**k? Female writer-director Lynn Shelton must have read your mind. Humpday is about two straight male friends who decide to have sex with each other for a variety of reasons – not least because they’re both men. Confused? Read on.

The story starts with Ben (Mark Duplass) and his wife who are planning to have a baby together. Ben is a good husband: loving, responsible and employed. Then one night, his old college buddy Andrew (Joshua Leonard) shows up to crash at his place. Andrew is a wild man. He quickly hooks up with a bisexual woman who throws even wilder parties.

When Ben decides to join Andrew at a party, they get drunk and challenge each other to take part in a porn contest where they – two straight guys – would have sex with each other. Now you would expect them to wake up the next morning and pretend nothing happened. But no. Neither wants to be back away from the challenge and be called “chicken”. So they decide to take the dare all the way to…

Well, we can’t give out the ending, can we? But we can tell you that Humpday is one hell of a movie. It makes fun of straight male bonding and transforms casual male exchanges into sexually-tinged ones. It examines latent homoeroticism in male friendships in a way no other film has done since the surprise ending of Y Tu Mama Tambien (2001).

It is sweet, funny, smart and very perceptive about masculinity and men – gay or straight. So dudes, go get your tickets.