Our next LGBTQ+ themed Christmas flick is far less polished than the other efforts so far, but gets plenty points for trying. Make the Yuletide Gay is a 2009 effort from director Rob Williams and is very similar in plot and theme to Happiest Season in that it’s about a closeted gay person heading home for the holidays and asking their lover to put on a charade to keep the relationship a secret. The key differences here are that our protagonist Olaf ‘Gunn’ Gunnunderson (Keith Jordan) is a guy and that his boyfriend Nathan (Adam Ruggiero) shows up unexpectedly to Olaf’s family Christmas gathering. This one also features a lot more broad comedy and silly innuendo, though it’s sweet-natured enough.
The production appears quite amateurish and very low budget but coasts on winning charm and some game, funny performances, with just enough of the infantile jokes landing to make it a partial success. Gunn is fiercely out and proud at college, sort of like an uber-confident, queer Zack Morris type around campus, but turns sheepish when he’s asked to spend Christmas with his traditional, old-fashioned ‘Cheesehead’ Wisconsin mom and pop. He could never pluck up the courage to come out to his family and decides the holidays will go a lot easier if he just pretends to be super-straight, avoiding any hassle or possible devastation for his straight-arrow parents. Cue hilarity as mom Anya (Kelly Keaton) and dad Sven (Derek Long) try their darnedest to fix him up with their neighbour’s cute, seemingly wholesome daughter Abby (Hallee Hirsch) who’s actually hiding a feisty, wild side.
Gunn’s liberal parents are adorable, giggly, affable boobs - clingy , goofy and cloying but with hearts full of love for their boy. I find it puzzling that he could never quite pluck up the courage to come out to them. Anya is mad for Christmas, plunging her son into various decorating activities, while Sven is the perma-stoned comic relief, perpetually oblivious to almost everything that’s going on around him. My favourite Sven moment is when he mistakes a sudoku puzzle for a crossword, remarking, “Hey, I need a nine letter word ending in four.” Gunn seems confident he can fly under the gay-dar for a few days.
The reindeer poop hits the fan when his much camper lover Nathan decides to gatecrash the party. He’s been blanked by his family since coming out to his own parents, who go off on a Christmas cruise without him - very un-jolly.
So, the stage is set. Gunn and Nathan try hard to keep up the pretence, much to Nathan’s chagrin - will the truth come out before Gunn does? And, more importantly, will the hormonal lads be able to keep their hands off each other? It’s a saucier take on the formula to what I’ve seen so far with the young characters being a lot more openly sex-mad and gagging for it. The focus here is a lot less on romance and more on horny animal lust which brings a few laughs, with the obligatory gags about the boys sharing a bunk bed and arguing about who’s going to be “on top”, and so on. It’s as though the writer had a list of all the queer innuendos he could think of and tried to stuff them all in (oo-er!). For a taste of what I’m talking about, there is a scene all about the boys sniggering about putting warm ‘balls’ in their mouths - with the ‘balls’ in question being Anya’s home-made cake pops. You get the idea. It’s definitely a movie that will double your entendres.
The boys’ act is hard to swallow (steady on!) as Nathan is very much camp-as-Christmas, so it’s difficult to believe mom and pops would buy that he’s just a good friend and roommate. Brilliantly, a surprisingly heartwarming and moving climax reveals Anya and Sven had their suspicions all along and are totally cool with everything. The film feels slight but is entertaining enough. I enjoy a low-budget film that transcends its limitations and manages to deliver some proper chuckles along the way.
The soundtrack is also really jolly with plenty of toe-tapping original Christmas compositions from composer Jake Monaco. The film is sweet, enjoyably absurd and makes me laugh plenty with a simultaneously moving and rib-tickling crescendo that I wasn’t expecting. Yes, it’s blatantly obvious that coming out for Gunn will be easy as pie and nowhere near as fraught as Nathan’s struggle. Yes, plenty of homosexual people will have far tougher times coming out but this is a decent enough wish-fulfilment comedy flick that leaves me with a smile on my face. Though the gag about the beautician offering the boys a “cut and blow” was probably pushing it.
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