When Adam Met Steve

When Adam Met Steve

“Adam & Steve” is strangely captivating in its balancing act between successful scenes and others so awkward that, uh, can you be this awkward by accident? There’s a story here, and some comic ideas, that could have made for an amusing romantic comedy in the hands of a better director (or a more ruthless editor). But the couple in love has to play out so many directorial conceits that the movie trips over itself. The director, Craig Chester, is also the co-star; as an actor, he’s got the wrong director.

Chester plays Adam Bernstein, first seen in the 1980s with best friend Rhonda (Parker Posey) dressed as Goths and entering a gay disco on Glitter Night, which is not their night. Adam locks eyes with dancer Steve (Malcolm Gets), and it’s love at first sight but “We don’t dance,” they say. “We’re Goths. We’re dead.” Not too dead for Steve to give Adam his first hit of cocaine, which makes him instantly addicted.

The coke is cut with baby laxative, leading to a scene where so many bodily wastes and fluids are ejected or vomited that it’s a serious plot miscalculation, triggering such a strong eee-uuu! reflex that the audience needs five minutes and a “17 Years Later” subtitle to get back on track.

Adam and Steve meet again in their late 30s; neither remembers their earlier meeting (or much else about the late ’80s). Adam is clean now and sober; he loves pets; he accidentally stabs his dog while slicing sausage and takes him to an Emergency Room for humans; Steve treats him there. A psychiatrist who says he “trained as a veterinarian” (does that make him a pet psychiatrist?), Steve falls for Adam at second sight.

Their romance develops despite standard plot conveniences (fear of commitment), but there’s a crisis when Steve figures out who Adam is and splits without confessing that he made the deposit on Adam’s rug 17 years ago. Will they make up? Can Rhonda and Steve’s straight roommate, Michael (Chris Kattan), be go-betweens? Before we can find out, we get a scene that’s both weird and funny.

You know those old musicals like “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers” where lumberjacks would have dance-offs to win the girl? Steve and Adam face off in a disco where Western line dancing and two stepping in cowboy boots are the style, and each instantly acquires backup dancers for an elaborately choreographed confrontation that’s as well staged as it is dramatically inexplicable. That scene, and one where Steve serenades Adam by singing to him at brunch, show how this movie uses any genre that can be looted for effect, and does it with humor and sometimes charm.

I really liked the visit to Adam’s parents, who are the nicest people in the world despite being afflicted with what they call the “Bernstein Curse” (mother in neck brace, father in wheelchair, sister bites tongue). I loved Posey’s deadpan as a former-fat goth turned slim stand-up comic still telling fat jokes. The scene where Adam (a bird-watcher leading tours in Central Park) is re-meeting Steve (after an unfortunate incident involving duck hunting) is great. And Sally Kirkland as an AA group leader screaming “No cross-talking!” during a verbal fight.

But what can we make of other scenes that destroy any dramatic effect and all but shout, This cumbersome scene is being committed to film by ham-handed amateurs? I’m thinking of a conversation that is observed by a man in the center background who stares at the camera, reacts to the conversation and closes the scene with an unintelligible comment.

Who was that man? Friend of the director? Investor? In another scene, a drunken girl trying to pick up Michael in a bar is so self-consciously awful in her awkward overacting you can see Kattan, a pro, wishing himself elsewhere. Or a scene where Adam and Rhonda have a talk on a bench in a gay sculpture park and in the last shot they awkwardly ‘happen’ to take the same pose as some sculptures they’re seated next to. What does shot like that mean? Where does it go? How do we react? Wow! They’re in the same pose as the sculpture!!

There’s also gay-bashing montage where Adam & Steve try to pursue their courtship while offscreen homophobes throw beer bottles at them; far from funny, not saved by pan up to street sign: “Gay Street.” Nor when Steve gets fed up with homophobic neighbor screaming insults at them and drags him (beaten bloody) into a bar so the gay basher can get his arm twisted while speaking for Steve in proposing marriage to Adam. Painfully bad.

The movie is 100 minutes long. I’m guessing that by taking out about 15 judicious minutes, it could be cut into a measurably better film funnier, more romantic, more professional. The sad thing is watching it find a rhythm and beginning to work as a comedy, and then run into a brick wall of miscalculation or incompetence. Any professional film editor watching this movie is going to suffer through one moment after another that begs to be ripped from the film and cut up into ukulele picks. Never mind the film editor: A lot of audiences, with all the best will in the world, are going to feel the same way.

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