#No movie with the line 'yucking my yumm' should be rated R

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Movie Review: RW&RB

Score: 2.5/5 ⭐ Conclusion: Yaoi Fanfiction strikes again Recommendation: do not watch WC: 1730

I will credit Casey McQuiston, the author of Red White & Royal Blue, for writing a book where coming out is depicted as something that can be stressful and daunting but not life-endangering. Her story actually focused on what Alex and Henry’s relationship would mean for history, each other, and their respective countries. These two characters actually grappled with what it means to be queer and in the public eye. They contemplated the erasure of queerness from history and struggled with the (false) choice between making history and being their authentic selves. In the book, both characters took time to discover what they wanted out of life and their relationship in a way that felt genuine. Alex exploring his queer identity felt organic and unique to his background and social position.

However, the book Red White & Royal Blue is prone to conventionality, cliche, dull and brusque dialogue, and heavy-handed political references (oh, the emails). The book features uncreative and baffling political conflict that could rival the taxation treaty debacles in The Phantom Menace, and it reveals the author’s inexperience with the subtleties of U.S. and U.K. history and politics. Additionally, the book's happy resolution feels underdeveloped. The characters got their happily ever after before the dust settled. It felt like the author slapped a bandage over the very-real relationship hurdles Alex and Henry had yet to work through.

Fortunately, the book was written to be a fun, queer rom-com rather than a serious work of fiction with a profound political message. It’s frivolous. It’s charming. The Los Angeles Review of Books called it "calorie-free." Unfortunately, the movie exacerbates the book's faults. The movie’s story is conventional and cliche in the worst possible ways. It tells a shallow and uninspiring story. The writing and performances will not leave the audience with many deep or complicated thoughts about the pressures of conformity, the harms of assumptions, or the benefits of safe spaces to come into one's "self." There was no message to sit with and contemplate when the credits rolled. It's perfectly forgettable. RW&RB is not a story that will stick in your mind or leave behind a profound legacy. In fact, the whole movie feels a little like a series of product placements for condoms and lube. Oh, and PrEP. 

Virality leaves no place for nuance, so those online break stories into small and often context-less moments: a series of gifs and a set of expressions. People hyper-focus on a particular moment— often one that is emotional or intimate— in which they wish to be in one of the character's shoes. They want an image or video that can be circulated rapidly and widely that, when separated from its context, allows any meaning or emotion to infuse with the imagery. RW&RB, the movie, delivers on that, and only that. It was made for the virality of the contextless moment where viewers can imprint their wants, desires, and feelings onto the scene. That's why movie promotion consisted primarily of 30-second clips of intimacy and emotional stills, and that's why the movie’s continued hype is primarily seen in a series of fan cams of the characters where their gazes, touches, tears, and smiles are reserved not for each other, but the viewer.

As a result of this hollow, context-less production, Red White & Royal Blue is formulaic and hackneyed, lacks personality, and its plot has been stripped of the messaging and the mental and emotional conflict which redeems the book. Compared to the book, the movie attempted to dedicate one, maybe two scenes to the importance of privacy and coming into your own on your own time in a space and environment where it is safe to explore identity. However, these scenes come too late and have no prior development. For those unfamiliar with the characters, the scenes feel out of place, and the concerns the characters raise in these scenes seem to come out of left field. When Alex confronts Henry about ghosting him near the end of the movie, I half expected Henry to mention something about Alex not keeping things casual enough because he can only “belong” to Alex momentarily, as this is all they had previously discussed. I was not expecting Galitzine to give a very heartfelt monologue about the pressures of politics and existing in the public eye as a queer man because the movie had forgotten to provide us with Henry’s motivations and main goals at any point previously. Production cut too much from book plot lines that focused on the main characters finding themselves and figuring out what they want, leaving them unable to develop the primary conflict later in the story. If the book is calorie-free, the movie is devoid of any nutrition.

The lack of depth leaves this movie feeling more like a Hallmark movie, a Disney Channel Original, or even the intro scene of a porno where everyone is talking and still has their pants on. It’s bland, and the acting certainly did not add any flavor. Zakhar Perez’s performance comes straight out of a Nickelodeon special. As Rachel Handler put it in Vulture, his performance oscillates between “Overtrained Child Star and Did Somebody Order a Big Sausage Pizza.” Gone is the nerdy, studious, earnest, and politically impressive Alex from the book, replaced by an arrogant, cheesy, ripped frat boy. On the exact other end of the spectrum is one of the few decent performances in the movie. Galitzine brought his dramatic background to a tonally inconsistent movie, making him feel out of place for the production quality and the genre and leaving me to wonder why the hell he took this role. And do not get me started on Thurman’s interpretation of a Texas accent.

This story felt rushed and stiff, and the character’s relationships and interactions felt forced and artificial. The production struggles with lackluster writing, exemplified by painfully cliche dialogue (and I thought the blunt dialogue of the book was bad). The story lacks a consistent tone, trying for a somber, serious, and heartfelt tone in a few scenes toward the end, something which felt very out of place for the Hallmark-esque camp of the rest of the story. It's as if the director and writers forgot the genre they were creating for. Scenes intended to be endearing were often flat and stale, while intimate and heart-wrenching scenes were painfully awkward, worsened by a seeming lack of post-production editing that left the characters blinking at each other on screen and very strange lighting decisions that left every scene so bright they bordered on overexposed. The movie has the same quality but none of the personality of a free YouTube movie, exemplified by insipid green-screen backgrounds and visual effects. The sets were tiny, the wardrobe uninspiring, and the crowds were eerily devoid of extras.

RW&RB’s terrible portrayal of U.S. and U.K. politics is emblematic of its significant writing, messaging, and direction issues. No one involved in the production understands how an election is run or how British society operates. Why was the first family involved in developing campaign strategies and discussing them on state time with the White House Chief of Staff? What was that mess of an electoral map featured at the end of the movie? (First, discussing a campaign on state time is a crime. Second, the President and Chief of Staff do not handle the development of campaign strategies. Third, a Democrat has not lost Minnesota since ’72, and if they were to lose Minnesota, the election would look more like ’72, where 49 of the 50 states voted for Nixon.) Who allowed a member of the Royal Family to appear at the DNC, practically endorsing the Democratic candidate, and later join her on stage for her acceptance speech? Where are the British tabloids? What is a Hanover-Stuart (also: how and why)? How many times would this movie call the third-in-line for the throne the Prince of Wales and the heir? The British government is homophobic, but the US is a bastion of progressiveness? Texas, blue? MSNBC???

These inaccurate and inadequate depictions of real-world issues and historical systems ultimately distract from the fact that this movie makes no commentary on queerness in modern politics despite that being a theme of the book. This movie critically lacks notice of the social, historical, and political nuances of male same-sex attraction or queerness in U.S. and U.K. politics. So much so that I would go so far as to say the movie is tone-deaf. For example, the main antagonist from the book— a homophobic Republican politician prone to abusing his power— is replaced by a mean, jealous ex-partner who is also a queer Latino and a political reporter. An example of tyranny was replaced by a political minority whose job is a pillar of democracy. 

The main characters’ relationship is “gay” only insofar as they're both men, but their relationship often seems to lack queerness. Director Matthew López described the movie as one of the most expensive fan fictions ever made. (What did that money go into because it could not have been the CGI?) The fan fiction tropes the movie employs— enemies to friends to lovers, royalty AU, forced companionship, relationship of convenience, mutual pining, etc.— don't just make the story devoid of any real human connection but also seem to "tame" the characters into a new set of social boxes. It's like these tropes provide an "acceptable" reason to be gay and, in the process, erase a man's queerness so he's gay only in ways that heterosexual people or heterosexist society can imagine. The movie filters queerness through a heterosexual lens and replaces one set of social conventions with another. The main characters become escapist fantasies that are just bland enough for straight women to project onto and conventional enough not to be offensive. Because this movie is escapism and self-indulgence for the straight audience, it has a very narrow view of how queer relationships should be. It's also the perfect escapism for straight women because no woman is featured in the relationship. No woman has to have her heart broken. No woman has to confront social taboos. No woman has to risk anything. It's just two hot guys. I keep returning to what Jackson McHenry said in Vulture: "It smacks of all the tropes of Yaoi-style stories written about gay men.”

I also still cannot figure out what warranted the R rating in this movie.

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Follow up: RW&RB

Score: 2.5/5 ⭐ Conclusion: It’s a fucking rom-com, it’s not politically profound Recommendation: do not watch WC: 2307

What annoys me the most about the "discourse" surrounding this movie is how some queer people are shutting down conversations about the "trope-y-ness" of this story and how it was stripped of its major queer narratives.

Some people online are using the existence of other queer men to sort-of shush or minimize critical opinions of this movie. I’ve seen several takes bring up the fact that there are gay men who enjoyed this movie as if that somehow cancels out critique of it. And I’ve seen people also bring up the queer men behind the movie's production as if this means that this movie is a bastion of queer liberation. For example, I came across a fairly popular TikTok video of a young queer woman telling a queer man that when he says the film was made for the straight audience and engages in Yaoi-style tropes, he is erasing all the men who enjoy the story and erasing the contributions of Director Matthew López and Intimacy Coordinator Robbie Taylor Hunt, both gay men. She called the man who voiced his opinion "toxic" and complained about him commenting on a video where she was on her "absolute best fandom behavior." Because people are only able to analyze media through the lens of fandom wars and "ships.”

So, let's not ignore the contributions of Matthew López, who described the movie as one of the most expensive fanfictions ever made. Let's talk about the implications that has on this story. Let's discuss how fanfiction isn't the bastion of queer liberation people insist it is. Let's address the pervasiveness of sex negativity and purity myths in fanfiction tropes. Let's have that conversation about how tropes "tame" queerness and provide an "acceptable reason" to be gay for the straight audience. Let's talk about how having queer people at the helm will not intrinsically result in queer media.

As I mentioned previously, the fan fiction tropes the movie employs— enemies to friends to lovers, royalty AU, belligerent sexual tension, fake relationship, forced proximity, forced companionship, teeth-clenched teamwork, relationship of convenience/contractual relationship, mutual pining, and loved you all along— make it devoid of any authentic human connection. A trope will never reflect the complexity of human relationships and norms, and it is never supposed to. Tropes are not meant to capture the subtleties of how we build romantic and platonic relationships. They will inherently lack awareness of the social, historical, and political nuances of male same-sex attraction and queerness.

This is why it is so disappointing that the movie cut plot lines dedicated to Alex coming to understand his sexuality, as his internal struggle helped give social, historical, and political significance to his queerness. Tropes like contractual relationship and forced proximity only offer a jumping-off point in the book while enemies to friends to lovers happens in the background amid conversations about how these characters cope with being notable to history and modern politics. The book firmly places both Alex and Henry in context through references to historical figures, especially historical queer figures, and addresses their potential footprint on modern politics and history as the queer descendants of national legacies and heads of state. This is why the line "History, huh" is reasonably affecting in the book but utterly meaningless in the movie.

Tropes also seem to "tame" the characters into a new set of social boxes. Fan fiction tropes often add another set of social conventions to existing social conventions, like living in a heterosexist society, to filter queerness through a heterosexual lens. They erase a man's queerness so he's gay only in ways that heterosexual people or heterosexist society can imagine it being okay. Tropes essentially provide an "acceptable" excuse to be gay. Two men falling in love is queer, except when they're forced together and forced to make nice by forces beyond their control and choice because then it's okay.

It reminds me of a specific brand of hypothetical questions that boys would ask girls in middle school: "Would you go out with me if I was the last man alive?" In the minds of many straight people, especially heteropessimists, there is an inevitability to relationships. Men and women "inevitably" end up together unless circumstances prevent or compel otherwise. In RW&RB, the movie, a romantic relationship befell the main characters because circumstances beyond their control and above their choice drove them together. These particular circumstances- including US/UK foreign relations and each of their family's sociopolitical positions- just happened to push two men together. So, of course, neither of them would "reasonably" end up with a woman. The "circumstances" did not allow for that. It's as if their relationship came to be for the same reason the last two people alive on a deserted island must work together to survive.

I can understand why this type of story may appeal to queer people, given that queer relationships have often been forced apart by circumstances beyond one's choice and control. To each their own. But people must understand that these romantic tropes exist precisely because queer people are often not allowed to choose to be together or define their relationships on their own terms. These stories are symptomatic of social norms that have kept queer people apart. As I said before, a contractual relationship or relationship of obligation (they signed NDAs and everything) that blossoms into something more is an "acceptable" excuse. It offers plausible deniability: "We're not really gay for each other; we just have to work together." Those around them will even buy into this excuse until they're outed without their consent on more than one occasion (think: Zahra believing Alex was just taking an interest in international affairs before she caught the two of them).

"But Alex and Henry choose to be together at the end of the movie." While it is important to note that the latter 1/3 of the movie is tonally dissimilar from the rest of the film, it is much more important to note that neither Alex nor Henry were given much in the way of choices throughout the story. They were not given a choice as to whether or not they worked together following cake-gate (think: the what if I set myself on fire, we'll send the ashes to Hethro interaction and Henry joking about how if Alex kills him, he won't be obligated to carry on the ruse) and then the moment they decided to find a way to love each other on their own terms, their power to self-determination was ripped out from underneath them once again, leading to the only scene in the movie with any of the same queer messaging from the book. The film deploys the "forced out of the closet" trope, and while the King gives the impression that Henry has the option to deny everything and return to the closet, this is a false impression. He did not have a choice in coming out, and he did not have a choice in going back into the closet. The United States and the FSOTUS had already come forward with an official statement from the White House podium. The Palace's hands were tied. Henry had but one choice: to be public.

"Okay, but these same tropes also exist in straight romantic media!" Yes. Exactly. I will disregard how the use of tropes commonly seen in straight media contributes to the "straight-ification" of queerness to focus more heavily on how relationships born out of love are still a relatively new idea in the history of m/f relationships as an institution. For example, the institution of m/f marriage was established as a contractual obligation to fulfill social and political functions. Women did not, and even still do not, get to choose their partners. That's why the idea of two people forced together by obligation falling in love is a romantic fantasy. There's a comfort in the belief that no matter the circumstances, because of the circumstances, this man will inevitably fall in love with "you." It's also why straight romantic media is often told from a woman's point of view.

Our romance media tropes- from "there's only one bed" to "we're forced together, but fall in love anyway"- are responses to the sex-negativity and purity culture norms forced upon gender and sexual minorities. They provide a workaround for these norms but never a direct challenge. It's like the Family Guy episode "Prick Up Your Ears," where conservative Christian abstinence-only sex ed leads to kids having ear sex. Ear sex was the workaround to the abstinence and purity rules they'd been taught, not the challenge. We still have stringent rules around who can touch whom and under what circumstances. Our romantic fantasy tropes reflect this. So, a trope like "there's only one bed" provides the characters with a justification for their intimacy without directly challenging why it is taboo.

What's particularly great about RW&RB for straight audiences, namely straight women audiences, is that because the relationship in RW&RB only features men, no woman has to confront social taboos around women's bodies and sexualities. On top of this, the main characters are just bland enough for straight women to project onto and conventional enough not to be offensive to straight or gay people. All of this combined allows straight women audiences to engage a little closer with the socially taboo and "obscene" without rethinking how they construct their bodies and actions to conform to current gender and sexual social values. Some are going so far as to place themselves into the fantasy, like an M/F/M reader-insert. For many of them, Henry and Alex are Nick and Taylor having a 'lil onscreen fun. This genre of story also allows them to avoid the reminder that current gender and sexual social values are designed for the benefit of men at the expense of women's comfort, pleasure, and safety. As I previously said, "It's just two hot guys" to them. It's like making two Ken dolls kiss. They can enjoy it without thinking about their own body or their own dissatisfaction.

RW&RB never addresses why a m/m relationship is considered taboo, historically or currently. It certainly doesn't address why the m/m relationship between the descendants of two of the most powerful military empires in modern history would be considered taboo. Addressing that would require addressing the historic and modern intricacies of sex and gender under imperialism, US/UK relations, domestic nationalism, and global foreign relations (including how US and UK imperialism has shaped international relations). As I mentioned, RW&RB suffers from inaccurate and inadequate depictions of real-world issues and historical systems to the point of tone-deafness. That tone-deafness expands beyond the movie's replacing a homophobic Republican politician with a political minority and even beyond its erasure of historical context and political conflict. That tone-deafness extends to the near-romanticism and clear defanging of imperialism.

The book's struggle with minimizing modern and historical political conflicts (namely, British imperialism) was terrible enough. (In the book, somehow Henry was always the exception to the rule- like his use of private funds rather than blood money- despite existing within a system that will always benefit him [and also always cage him as a queer man]. Henry makes no effort to change that system despite voicing his disagreement. He just abdicates.) The movie's disregard for the legacies of the institutions which the characters exist within is worse. At least the book tried to reference modern injustices in the American political system (namely, gerrymandering). The movie just provided some shallow pillow talk with a somewhat awkward mention of immigration while managing to doge any reference to the current pitfalls in the U.S. immigration system- including the border crisis where a record 853 migrants died crossing the U.S.-Mexico border in 2022.

There's more to this than them both being men. They aren't anonymous people in the world, and while the movie mentions this on several occasions (Henry belongs to Britain, Alex will have more free time after his mother's reelection, and have you ever thought about who you'd be if you were an anonymous person in the world), it fails to address the implications of this lack of anonymity on anything other than Henry's psyche. So, the viewer is only left with a conglomeration of tropes designed to make a m/m relationship more "acceptable" to a broad audience and avoid questioning why modern society wouldn't accept these specific men being together. (The King only gave a vague half-answer about British tradition, but if we're honest with ourselves, they would spark more outrage in the U.S. not because they were both men but because Henry is a Prince of England.)

The movie is fundamentally unable to make a commentary about modern queer politics, queer history, or queerness on an international stage. And the thing is... that's fine (I guess). It does not really need to. People only need to realize that it was never going to and was never intended to. Claiming that this movie; this very expensive piece of fan fiction, is a bastion of queer liberation would be like claiming a Hallmark Christmas movie makes poignant feminist commentary. To continue to insist that this movie does something significant is nothing short of insulting. And to suggest that having queer men at the helm makes this movie powerful is nothing short of tokenism. Representation is more than having a social or political minority fill a role. You have to consider the story they are or are not telling and what message that story leaves behind.

"[RW&RB] tells a shallow and uninspiring story. The writing and performances will not leave the audience with many deep or complicated thoughts about the pressures of conformity, the harms of assumptions, or the benefits of safe spaces to come into one's 'self.' There was no message to sit with and contemplate when the credits rolled. It's perfectly forgettable. [It] is not a story that will stick in your mind or leave behind a profound legacy."

RW&RB certainly won't make history, huh.

Movie Review: RW&RB

Score: 2.5/5 ⭐ Conclusion: Yaoi Fanfiction strikes again Recommendation: do not watch WC: 1730

I will credit Casey McQuiston, the author of Red White & Royal Blue, for writing a book where coming out is depicted as something that can be stressful and daunting but not life-endangering. Her story actually focused on what Alex and Henry’s relationship would mean for history, each other, and their respective countries. These two characters actually grappled with what it means to be queer and in the public eye. They contemplated the erasure of queerness from history and struggled with the (false) choice between making history and being their authentic selves. In the book, both characters took time to discover what they wanted out of life and their relationship in a way that felt genuine. Alex exploring his queer identity felt organic and unique to his background and social position.

However, the book Red White & Royal Blue is prone to conventionality, cliche, dull and brusque dialogue, and heavy-handed political references (oh, the emails). The book features uncreative and baffling political conflict that could rival the taxation treaty debacles in The Phantom Menace, and it reveals the author’s inexperience with the subtleties of U.S. and U.K. history and politics. Additionally, the book's happy resolution feels underdeveloped. The characters got their happily ever after before the dust settled. It felt like the author slapped a bandage over the very-real relationship hurdles Alex and Henry had yet to work through.

Fortunately, the book was written to be a fun, queer rom-com rather than a serious work of fiction with a profound political message. It’s frivolous. It’s charming. The Los Angeles Review of Books called it "calorie-free." Unfortunately, the movie exacerbates the book's faults. The movie’s story is conventional and cliche in the worst possible ways. It tells a shallow and uninspiring story. The writing and performances will not leave the audience with many deep or complicated thoughts about the pressures of conformity, the harms of assumptions, or the benefits of safe spaces to come into one's "self." There was no message to sit with and contemplate when the credits rolled. It's perfectly forgettable. RW&RB is not a story that will stick in your mind or leave behind a profound legacy. In fact, the whole movie feels a little like a series of product placements for condoms and lube. Oh, and PrEP. 

Virality leaves no place for nuance, so those online break stories into small and often context-less moments: a series of gifs and a set of expressions. People hyper-focus on a particular moment— often one that is emotional or intimate— in which they wish to be in one of the character's shoes. They want an image or video that can be circulated rapidly and widely that, when separated from its context, allows any meaning or emotion to infuse with the imagery. RW&RB, the movie, delivers on that, and only that. It was made for the virality of the contextless moment where viewers can imprint their wants, desires, and feelings onto the scene. That's why movie promotion consisted primarily of 30-second clips of intimacy and emotional stills, and that's why the movie’s continued hype is primarily seen in a series of fan cams of the characters where their gazes, touches, tears, and smiles are reserved not for each other, but the viewer.

As a result of this hollow, context-less production, Red White & Royal Blue is formulaic and hackneyed, lacks personality, and its plot has been stripped of the messaging and the mental and emotional conflict which redeems the book. Compared to the book, the movie attempted to dedicate one, maybe two scenes to the importance of privacy and coming into your own on your own time in a space and environment where it is safe to explore identity. However, these scenes come too late and have no prior development. For those unfamiliar with the characters, the scenes feel out of place, and the concerns the characters raise in these scenes seem to come out of left field. When Alex confronts Henry about ghosting him near the end of the movie, I half expected Henry to mention something about Alex not keeping things casual enough because he can only “belong” to Alex momentarily, as this is all they had previously discussed. I was not expecting Galitzine to give a very heartfelt monologue about the pressures of politics and existing in the public eye as a queer man because the movie had forgotten to provide us with Henry’s motivations and main goals at any point previously. Production cut too much from book plot lines that focused on the main characters finding themselves and figuring out what they want, leaving them unable to develop the primary conflict later in the story. If the book is calorie-free, the movie is devoid of any nutrition.

The lack of depth leaves this movie feeling more like a Hallmark movie, a Disney Channel Original, or even the intro scene of a porno where everyone is talking and still has their pants on. It’s bland, and the acting certainly did not add any flavor. Zakhar Perez’s performance comes straight out of a Nickelodeon special. As Rachel Handler put it in Vulture, his performance oscillates between “Overtrained Child Star and Did Somebody Order a Big Sausage Pizza.” Gone is the nerdy, studious, earnest, and politically impressive Alex from the book, replaced by an arrogant, cheesy, ripped frat boy. On the exact other end of the spectrum is one of the few decent performances in the movie. Galitzine brought his dramatic background to a tonally inconsistent movie, making him feel out of place for the production quality and the genre and leaving me to wonder why the hell he took this role. And do not get me started on Thurman’s interpretation of a Texas accent.

This story felt rushed and stiff, and the character’s relationships and interactions felt forced and artificial. The production struggles with lackluster writing, exemplified by painfully cliche dialogue (and I thought the blunt dialogue of the book was bad). The story lacks a consistent tone, trying for a somber, serious, and heartfelt tone in a few scenes toward the end, something which felt very out of place for the Hallmark-esque camp of the rest of the story. It's as if the director and writers forgot the genre they were creating for. Scenes intended to be endearing were often flat and stale, while intimate and heart-wrenching scenes were painfully awkward, worsened by a seeming lack of post-production editing that left the characters blinking at each other on screen and very strange lighting decisions that left every scene so bright they bordered on overexposed. The movie has the same quality but none of the personality of a free YouTube movie, exemplified by insipid green-screen backgrounds and visual effects. The sets were tiny, the wardrobe uninspiring, and the crowds were eerily devoid of extras.

RW&RB’s terrible portrayal of U.S. and U.K. politics is emblematic of its significant writing, messaging, and direction issues. No one involved in the production understands how an election is run or how British society operates. Why was the first family involved in developing campaign strategies and discussing them on state time with the White House Chief of Staff? What was that mess of an electoral map featured at the end of the movie? (First, discussing a campaign on state time is a crime. Second, the President and Chief of Staff do not handle the development of campaign strategies. Third, a Democrat has not lost Minnesota since ’72, and if they were to lose Minnesota, the election would look more like ’72, where 49 of the 50 states voted for Nixon.) Who allowed a member of the Royal Family to appear at the DNC, practically endorsing the Democratic candidate, and later join her on stage for her acceptance speech? Where are the British tabloids? What is a Hanover-Stuart (also: how and why)? How many times would this movie call the third-in-line for the throne the Prince of Wales and the heir? The British government is homophobic, but the US is a bastion of progressiveness? Texas, blue? MSNBC???

These inaccurate and inadequate depictions of real-world issues and historical systems ultimately distract from the fact that this movie makes no commentary on queerness in modern politics despite that being a theme of the book. This movie critically lacks notice of the social, historical, and political nuances of male same-sex attraction or queerness in U.S. and U.K. politics. So much so that I would go so far as to say the movie is tone-deaf. For example, the main antagonist from the book— a homophobic Republican politician prone to abusing his power— is replaced by a mean, jealous ex-partner who is also a queer Latino and a political reporter. An example of tyranny was replaced by a political minority whose job is a pillar of democracy. 

The main characters’ relationship is “gay” only insofar as they're both men, but their relationship often seems to lack queerness. Director Matthew López described the movie as one of the most expensive fan fictions ever made. (What did that money go into because it could not have been the CGI?) The fan fiction tropes the movie employs— enemies to friends to lovers, royalty AU, forced companionship, relationship of convenience, mutual pining, etc.— don't just make the story devoid of any real human connection but also seem to "tame" the characters into a new set of social boxes. It's like these tropes provide an "acceptable" reason to be gay and, in the process, erase a man's queerness so he's gay only in ways that heterosexual people or heterosexist society can imagine. The movie filters queerness through a heterosexual lens and replaces one set of social conventions with another. The main characters become escapist fantasies that are just bland enough for straight women to project onto and conventional enough not to be offensive. Because this movie is escapism and self-indulgence for the straight audience, it has a very narrow view of how queer relationships should be. It's also the perfect escapism for straight women because no woman is featured in the relationship. No woman has to have her heart broken. No woman has to confront social taboos. No woman has to risk anything. It's just two hot guys. I keep returning to what Jackson McHenry said in Vulture: "It smacks of all the tropes of Yaoi-style stories written about gay men.”

I also still cannot figure out what warranted the R rating in this movie.