Ben and Andrew make a porno

Humpday

(2009)

If it's set on the West Coast and has a plot, can it still be mumblecore? Humplecore?

About that plot: it's the sort of foolishness you'd come up with drunk and stoned at a party: old college buddies, one squarely married, the other footloose and arty, both ostensibly straight, are drunk and stoned at a party with a bunch of polyamorous artists when they hit upon the perfect project: they'll make a porn film, together.

What might have been a brainless goofy romp becomes a brainy goofy romp in the hands of writer-director Lynn Shelton--no accident, I suspect, that it took a woman to confront the whys of coming up with the idea in the first place, of feeling compelled to go through with it in the calm sobriety of the morning after, and of confronting all the realities of logistics and implications. In the process, all the sublimated homoeroticism of every buddy movie ever made, not to mention most great American novels, is mined and refined hammered into gold plate. OK, the metaphor got away from me, but still: a stunningly good film; see it.