Okay, so we can't really give you a straight recap of the movie (and we fully intend that pun on "straight," mind you, since the gay sex we looked forward to with about as much eagerness as the average botched flu shot never graced my 19-inch...screen), because in between bouts of Vivarin-snorting, we spent the bulk of the film fast-forwarding, screaming, "Where's the gay sex, goddammit?" and then fielding the resultant offended phone calls from the neighbors, and trying to figure out how the Dictaphone worked. Thank God in His heaven that Gustave brought beer (and straws), or we'd never have made it.
Warning: 1) Not for the politically correct. 2) Not for those who expect anything herein to make sense. 3) Not.
And now, a quick aside to any employees of Kozmo.com -- look, I just forgot, okay? I didn't, like, keep the movie to watch it again. I just forgot to return it. So just delete the part of my permanent cookie or file or whatever in which you laugh at me because you think I'm doing screen captures of Jason Behr's non-gay non-sex scenes. Because I didn't. And won't. Ever. Simple oversight.
Okay, back to the non-recap, in which Sars and Djb waste a perfectly good Saturday afternoon transcribing the taped version of their comments during the movie. Here's the highlight reel...
The end.
Psych! Okay, really. Here's the highlights. No, seriously.
A sarcastic endorsement of the font used in the title sequence.
Sars reacts to a shot of a truck ascending a hill by sounding the false alarm: "Oh my god, is that his penis?" Needless to say, the answer to that question: no.
Truck shot continues. Djb bemoans the "Dean Stockwell vanity project." Ballyhooed campfire scene is spotted. No sex so far, gay or otherwise.
Then there's a break in the tape. I think it's because Gustave called to see if he could pick up his Popular tape. Plus we can't understand anything on the tape anyway, because we either sound like Alvin and Theodore or like the grubby leather-clad guy in Raising Arizona, depending on the tape speed.
And now, on with the non-recap. Again. Like I said before.
Djb says something about the Coolidge administration, which we found really funny at the time, but we don't know what it refers to now. Then Djb thinks aloud that "it won't be the last time one man says to another 'don't point that thing at me' in this movie." He admits that he was wrong about that. Painfully, horribly wrong.
Sars yawning. Djb spotting the newest feature on Fametracker, "Hey, It's That -- Oh, Wait, I Don't Give A Shit." In the movie, convicts shoot two guys at a campsite. Don't bother caring. We didn't.
Long stretch of snore-punctuated silence. Except for the snoring, which would have livened things up considerably.
"Cut. CUT. CUT!! Thank you."
Low-Rent Casey Siemaszko (and we mean low, like "food stamps paid for that guy" low, although Djb would like me to point out that Casey Siemaszko is himself a low-rent Casey Siemaszko) goes to a hotel and discovers his dad, Dean Stockwell, consorting with a woman not his wife. Or, really, a woman, unless William Fichtner has had a sex change in the last, oh, I don't know, three years. Which he hasn't. Thank God. Anyway, the agonizingly dorky melodrama attached to this revelation serves as our first sign that everything has gone terribly wrong, starting with the name of the movie -- I mean, hand us the "shite" joke, why don't you -- and proceeding straight (heh) through the "Live From Bellevue" casting call, the L.L.-Bean-paid-for-this-movie-and-don't-you-forget-it wardrobe, and of course the presence of the then Chris "Teen" Wolf in the so-called "lead," if by "lead" we mean "the guy who gets the glycerin." Bored yet? Us too.
Anyway. Wind blows through the shreds of plot. Or so says Djb. I'd fallen asleep with a lit cigarette in my mouth.
"Enter the gaylord. Gaylord Perry." No, we have no idea what that means. I have a feeling, though, that it means Jason Behr and his hoop earring that ate Chicago have just arrived on the scene, the better to taunt us with the promise of nude buttocks, and then not deliver in a resounding fashion.
Dialogue from the film: "What are you crazy?" "Back off!" Indiscriminate use of pegged Levi's 550s by the wardrobe mistress. If that's her real name. Djb: "There's a flannel joke in here somewhere, but I'm not getting what it is." That's because he's, you know, sleeping. Soundly. "Is that your way of asking me to stay?" Jason Behr wants to know. No, it sure isn't.
Woods. Quaint ones. Low-Rent Casey Siemaszko has a big ass. Jason Behr needs a haircut. Trugoy needs a haircut. Why don't you get yourself a haircut? (Scrub.) More flannel. Someone's chest draws groans of horror from the couch, i.e. "Augh! Button up!"
Dock talk with Dean Stockwell. Djb files for workman's comp; Sars pokes herself with pushpins. Current score: Moody shots of driving automobiles, 10,000,000. Gay sex, 0. Sepia-toned flashback of Dean torturing Jason Behr in some swimming-related something or other that Oedipus would have dismissed as "pussy shit." Dean wants to see a smile on Jason's face. So do we. How about some...gay sex? "Come outta there, like a man!" Okay, Dean. We all want the same thing here.
"No one cares, get to the gay sex!"
"Word."
"I'm fast-forwarding right now, if anyone cares."
"Blah, blah, blah."
Father-and-son fighting. Hideous dialogue. An ominous knock on the door. It's the Rangers, making sure there's no gay sex going on. No, it isn't. It's the convicts. But no one cares, not even the actors playing them. One of the actors looks like a former co-worker of mine. Even the former co-worker doesn't care.
"Don't tell me he's gonna fuck that guy." Oh, the naïveté...the halcyon days when I believed that someone in the movie would actually, you know, do some fucking. No fucking. No flashbacks to fucking. But I digress. Must be something in the air.
"No one cares! No. One. Cares."
Gustave arrives, with beer. There is celebrating. Air Crisps come out of the kitchen. The blood-sugar levels have shot up, but we're no closer to paying attention. Gustave asks, "So what is the point of this movie?" We tell him that we heard that Jason Behr kisses a boy in it. There is no step three...there is no step three! [Chuckle.]
Discussion of the size of the beer cans. Discussion of whether Jason Behr's ears look better now.
"Get to the goddamn gay sex!"
"These three are going to have gay sex too?"
"No. Jason Behr, and the scrawny Down's-syndrome-looking guy."
Discussion of whether the presence of A Guy Who Just Got Out Of Prison + A Guy Smoking A Cigar = Potential Sex Of The Gay Variety.
Movie: "What did you say? WHAT did you say?"
Djb: "What did he say?"
Gustave: "'I want to fuck Jason Behr up the ass.'"
Silence. Then Gustave advances the theory that the American Indians were slaughtered because they were gay. He does not explain why the slaughter took place. A reference to the information superhighway is derided.
"I thought he was gonna talk about gay sex. Fast forward."
"And then...they kissed."
"Oops, they didn't."
"Me and Gustave, that is."
"So very tiresome, you gays and your sex."
"Oh look, they're holding hands."
The low sound mix on the dialogue is explained thusly -- they filmed Rites Of Passage in a Christian Gay Science Reading Room. Another long stretch of silence. Then someone on-screen does a countdown, at the end of which I yell out, "Gay sex!"
"You know what would be a lot less strenuous than watching this?"
"The closing credits?"
"Gay sex."
"Ah, yes. I guess you're the top now."
I do my best Basil Exposition impression. Then someone on-screen says, "All right, we're done with this," at which point I announce, "It's time for the gay sex." We fill in Gustave on the drag version of William Fichtner. Then Gustave says something about Jason Behr hooking his legs behind his ears, and I will have to pretend that I have no idea what he meant by that, or I will go mad.
"Okay, now that we've clarified that you're HIV-negative, why don't you have...gay sex?"
Silence.
"Because his lover was...killed by...gay sex!"
A wholly inappropriate reference to 7th Heaven (don't ask). Gauzy flashback. A nipple.
"They aren't even doing anything."
"Seriously."
"What? [Sigh.]"
"There wasn't even a kiss! Wasn't there supposed to be a fire involved?"
"So I've been hearing."
"The flickering of flames over waxed buttocks? I'm gonna be really angry if I paid four twenty-five and I don't get to see some waxed buttocks. Engaged in gay sex."
"At least you get to write an Extra on how there's no gay sex in it."
"Oh, don't worry."
"Yeah, that's the title -- 'Where's The Goddamn Gay Sex?' Let's see how many e-mails we get on that one."
"Mothers are like, 'AHHH!'"
"You thought the Ed recaps were offensive...the site's takin' a new direction."
"Yep...the direction of gay sex."
Jason Behr has come back to the house, although we thought he'd left in a huff. But really, we weren't paying attention. Because of, you know, the gay sex. What gay sex? Exactly. Incest? Nope, none of that either.
"Ew, what's with the bulge?"
"What bulge?"
"Low-Rent Casey Siemaszko's got some weird tent action going on. Why are they, like, panting?"
And now for the dream sequence. Someone who shall remain nameless offers to teach Jason Behr about gay sex. Don't bother, dude. That same someone comments that it's amazing how bad Jason Behr looks compared to "good actors." That someone is told to 1) slow down with the beer, and then to 2) get out.
"'Cameo'? That's his name?"
"And what's with the plaid? No one owns a solid-colored shirt?"
Jason Behr had a pen-pal relationship with one of the convicts. The revelation takes a good twenty minutes to come out (so to speak). Gustave compares Jason Behr's neck to that of a giraffe. The group gives up any hope of gay sex. But not, of course, on the puerile jokes about same, op. cit.: "Okay, Plaid Family Robinson? We need some gay sex."
"Hey, gay sex in a boat." No, not really.
Jason Behr is diagnosed with "Flowbee rage." A command is issued: "Just pork already, we're bored."
I would continue, but really, this is it, folks. "Just pork already, we're bored"? That's the recap. We sat on the couch. We giggled hysterically at gay-sex jokes that an eleven-year-old would deem immature. We drank beer. We drank more beer. I invited Gustave to have gay sex with me in order to derive some sort of entertainment, no matter how louche and pathetic, from the evening. Gustave theorized that I would make a great top but declined the offer on the grounds that "gay man trapped in a woman's body" still doesn't do it for him.
Just to review: Rites Of Passage contains no, and we mean no, gay sex. Feel free to watch it with your kids, once you've washed their brains out with soap for reading this non-re-non-cap.