In and Out Review

Greenleaf Indiana is a great big small town in America, or so it thinks.... but when, at the 68th Oscar ceremony local boy made Hollywood megastar Cameron - Matt Dillon - outs his high school English teacher Howard Brackett - Kevin Kline - the local jaws drop. Howard is just about to marry Emily - Joan Cusack - after a three year engagement - and he genuinely loves the romantic poets and Barbra Streisand. He`s not gay. He`s not! This film is such a delight in the way it pokes fun at squeaky clean middle America. It was written by Paul Rudnick, inspired by Tom Hanks` Academy Awards speech. Rudnick in another guise communicates as Libby Gelman-Waxner in Premiere magazine..... and the writing talent is one of the strengths of the film.... it`s screamingly funny in parts. Kevin Kline is great in this, as is Tom Selleck who plays a gay TV anchorperson who hones in on Greenleaf to hunt Howard. Debbie Reynolds plays Howard`s mother who`s desperate, not necessarily for Howard to get married, but for a wedding, his father is Wilfred Brimley. I wasn`t mad on Joan Cusack as Howard`s fiance - she`s grossly constructed as a character and she plays it that way. The film`s resolution isn`t exactly like Mr. Holland`s Opus but it`s close enough to be yucky, and Matt Dillon`s character goes from thick to sensitive from one appearance to the next; but despite the nitpicks I enjoyed much of In and Out enormously.