Shortbus - Spoilers included

Shortbus is the kind of movie I'm glad was made but utltimately doesn't help our cause. Or, I'm a square.

Here are the problems I had with it:

1. everyone's really beautiful
2. no one talks like that, except for people doing movies about sexuality in new york city
3. if they're so open and free and sex positive, how come the song at the end connotates anal sex with death. i.e. it's a bad thing.

Years ago, I was talking with some actor friends and I came to the conclusion that if we really wanted to be edgy and honest, hardcore sex in a movie would be the coolest and most honest thing to do. So, that's very cool. Plus, the papier mache city is really, really cool (and a great cost saving alternative to doing flyovers in manhattan (hi, that baseball player whose name i don't know but wish i did so i
could've yelled it out during the movie when they were flying into buildings) )

I don't get why if you're going to have a salon/orgy palace like Shortbus, everyone has to dress up. Why do you have to have your backup singers hanging upside down? Why all the affectation?

these characters:

1. The uptight asian sex therapist who has never had an orgasm and
2. her closeted gay husband
3. the beautiful but suicidal young gay man with a past
4. the dumb actor boyfriend
5. the flamboyant, acid tounged sexually ambiguous host ("It's like the sixties but with less hope, honey!")
6. the s&m worker who longs for a simple life

etc.

are so obvious... and the story is, too.

Oh, brownouts... I bet she has an orgasm and the lights go on.... Check.

This is an emperor has no clothes movie. If you don't like it you have issues. It's impossible to critique.

"them: See, you have issues. Us people who like sex think this is a really important movie."

I do like sex, but does one have to like a movie's subject to enjoy the movie?

You're trapped by the subject like with something like Schindler's List: It's an important subject, but if you don't like the movie, you're a nazi.

And... why does free sexual expression always involve whipping, food, tattoos, singing the national anthem into someone's asshole and dressing up?

"See, people dress up and have sex because it's fun. You're obviously a square."

bah...

The other "out" of Shortbus is: "Well, it's a movie... it's a fantasy..."

If they were so free with their sexuality, why did all the women hole themselves up in a room away from everyone and then talk about sex and then exclude the hot asian babe and the "punky" girl for how they felt about sex?

On the other hand, I will tell everyone I know to see it. I mean, it opens with a shot of the statue of liberty, right? That's great.

It's an important movie and deserves to be seen, but again, I think that ultimately, it doesn't help we who love freedom because it is so exclusive.

That's all.