Mr Coogan has a very curious accent in this movie. His character Charley is a rather goofy and uptight English gay man who’s lived in the US for the last twenty years. Accordingly, his accent is a mix of slightly-camp Mancunian with a Mid-Atlantic twang. He calls chocolate ‘candy’. It takes some getting used to when you’re familiar with Coogan’s usual voice. We’re also treated to an unlikely scene where an attractive young man pleasures himself to secret closed-circuit TV footage of Mr Coogan sweeping up in his underwear. The other way round would be more believable, but then, much of Mr Loos’s movies involves a certain suspension of disbelief. You just sit back and enjoy the unlikeliness of it all.
But Mr Coogan’s main storyline, involving a fear that his boyfriend’s sperm has been used by their lesbian friends to father their child, suffers the ensemble movie curse of being upstaged by other more engrossing plots. Not least the storyline involving Maggie Gyllenhaal’s character, an older and less rabidly evil version of the Christina Ricci role from “The Opposite Of Sex”. Ms G is a homeless gold-digger who inveigles her way into a wealthy household, bedding first the (gay) son then the father.
She even gets a poolside bikini seduction scene, just like in the other film:
From The Opposite Of Sex:
From Happy Endings:
(to be continued)
