Cute. Mild. Talkative. Conventional. White. Bourgeoisie. Tease. Chuckles.
If these words aren't already in the tag cloud for Young People Fucking, you should go over them while deciding whether to watch it.
There is a plot, but the real set-up is this: pals Martin Gero and Aaron Abrams developed a mild sex comedy, the kind the French watch over petit déjeuner. For a laugh, they decided to slap a flamboyant title on it. Ha-ha, Aaron and Martin laughed. Ha-ha, they laughed, all the way to the poorhouse.
Their decision turned their little trifle of a script into a cause celebre in Ottawa, triggering a debate over government funding for the arts. Meanwhile, in the moviehouses, mainstream audiences were scared off. In the fundamentalist US, the box office approached five figures. On the other hand, hard-core audiences found nothing to get excited about.
In fairness, it's always easier to identify other people's self-destructive decisions than one's own. In fact, if you do watch Young People Fucking, you'll find nothing to get irate about. You may not find much to get hot and/or bothered about either, but that's a matter of taste. It's like an episode of "Friends," with benefits.
As indicated in the synopsis, the movie follows four couples and one threesome through a night's events. At barely 90 minutes including the credits, though, there's not much screen time to spread around. As a result, the cast spends a lot of time rushing through backstories in an effort to make us care about their characters. This movie could have benefitted by borrowing Basil Exposition from the Austin Powers movies.
Abrams makes himself the closest thing to the male lead, opening the movie meeting with a long-time friend in a one-night attempt to distract themselves from their mutual losing streaks in relationships. As the female near-lead, suavely vulgar Carly Pope enunciates the movie's thesis, "Sometimes a f*ck is just a f*ck."
The rest of the movie is a tell-and-tell-and-tell-and-show effort to develop an antithesis. Abrams and Pope are likable performers, and they go through the script's checklist of points crisply. Not with a lot of sexual tension, but a lot of professionalism.
And speaking of sex, that's mainly what Abrams and Pope do, talk about off-screen activity. Even when they're supposedly going at it, Gero makes careful use of studied camera angles and deep shadow to keep Abrams' private parts private. The actor could be playing the title role in "Chuck" except with state secrets imprinted on his butt instead of his brain. Pope has a gorgeous face, but she's all hair and makeup, teeth and lips. The more clothes Pope takes off, the more immature she looks. (Although Carly Pope has no reason to wear a bra under any circumstances, she keeps her 30 AA-cup on for all but about 10 seconds.)
Abrams and Pope also launch another thread common to the other plot lines: his character is freaking out over the situation and having performance trouble; hers is pushing for action.
That's even more so with the young marrieds played by Kristin Booth and Josh Dean. Both are looking for more spice in their sex life. He's the sensitive type. She's unnecessarily concerned about her weight. As they blunder through the subsequent conversation, he spends part of the time talking with his face framed by her thighs. It's amusing, but the emotional level is strictly sit-com. Eventually, they go for a mild reversal of sexual roles, with no nudity.
By far the best looking pair in the movie, Callum Blue and Diora Baird, are cast according to type. He's a player, playing on his accent and thin but muscular build. With her extravagant bosom and dramatic beauty, Baird could have anyone she wants. So the very minor mystery is, why does she seem so innocent? But don't expect much skin. Together, these well-built people expose about as much flesh as whisper-thin Carly Pope.
Buried in the heart of this movie, there is one thoughtful and almost moving storyline. Sonja Bennett and Josh Cooke play former lovers, getting back together as friends and deciding to have one for old time sake. The two have the chemistry missing from the other couples, and keep their essential sadness just below the surface. They also look good enough to be hot together without being so gorgeous that their attraction seems merely physical. Again, though, the sex is curiously staged to protect Cooke from exposing anything critical, although the small-breasted Bennett does her part. I'd be happy to see a movie about these characters, or watch these actors paired in a more fully realized vehicle.
The threesome is played strictly for laughs. Nerdish Peter Oldring gets recruited by his roommate, the average-looking Ennis Esmer, to have sex with the latter's mysteriously hot girlfriend, played by Natalie Lisinska. The catch is, Esmer insists on not only watching, but directing the action. Except for Bennett, the rest of the cast owes a debt of gratitude to Oldring, who keeps himself in good shape, and Lisinska, here a flashy blonde. The two energetically mime the sex that most of the actors underplay or avoid.
Other elements of the threesome are interesting, but perhaps not intentionally. It's the only section that raises the option of gay sex, not that it wants to get too far with that on screen. The driving force, so to speak, is Esmer, who is also the only cast member whose looks vaguely suggest the possibility of anything other than pure Caucasian blood. As it happens, he's Turkish. It's remarkable that the people who made and cast this movie apparently don't know any, for instance, Japanese-Canadian actors. But I'm sure they all have a favourite Japanese restaurant in Vancouver.