Traveling To Olympia

Its a shame to see when the intentions behind a film are decent but the execution is so amateurish and bad, you can't help but laugh. This film is, in a few very cases, a story about how some gay men can come together and help each other in time of need with work, emotions and love and make each other a better person. Sadly, only if the intentions translated in the right way.

A young boy Johny has just been released from a juvenile facility and now wants to turn around his life. He is on his way to Oylmpia, and manages to get a job in a restaurant since he doesn't want to sell his body. Soon he meet Joel, a guy who works helping gay men who are assaulted for some other case that happened in the restaurant. They soon get into a platonic relationship because Joel never forces himself on Johny understanding very well that he has a troubled past. In parallel we have another story of two fo Joel's friends: a young wealthy college student and his 40 something politician lover. The relationship changes viewpoints and makes our politician come "out" while supporting gay rights. The four get together occasionally and discuss about gay rights and issues.

The one big problem with the film is that it doesn't know what it wants to be. Shot through video camera on probably a very low budget, there are two long drawn out full on sex scenes which were so not needed and come as a surprise in an otherwise ok-ish film so far. I am not saying they were bad to watch but they just didn't fit in. The love story between Johny and Joel was done quite well and they acted pretty decent. The relationship between The other two guys was alright though it would have been good to know some back story on them how they met and got together. Because a young successful lawyer falling for a closet middle aged guy doesn't seem likeliest of things to happen. Johny is a very good looking guy but I couldn't say the same about the others, who were strictly ok.

I think the film was started with good intention, but somewhere the makers lost the plot, got bad actors, tried to fill in scenes with sex to make it more commercial and in the process ended up making this a mish mash of nothing. I might have been more forgiving 15 years ago when I just started to watch gay films, and I know it's a bit unfair to this film that I am watching it now but I guess part of a film's journey is to also see how they have aged. (3/10)

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