Movie Nation

“One Second” is an often loud, generally goofy Egyptian comedy of the High Concept school.

It’s no better and not really any worse than a lot of similar Hollywood farces built on similarly silly concepts. But the novelty of it being Egyptian intrigued me enough to take this “Around the World with Netflix” trip.

The “high concept,” which has to be funny enough and simple enough to be summed up in a sentence, is a that businesswoman finds herself responsible for an unidentified grown man who develops amnesia due to a car accident she helped cause. The hook? He thinks he’s a child, and that she’s his “Mommy.”

Just getting to that takes a bit of screen time and a lot of the energy of Mostafa Hamdy’s script.

First, there’s rushed, nagged Dina (Dina El Sherbiny), late on her way to a big job interview, badgered by her Dad-hating mother (Sawsan Badr).

Self-absorbed Mom won’t let Dina get dressed and out the door without another telephoned tirade about Dina’s father.

“Who else can I vent to?” in Arabic with English subtitles.

“To God,” Dina hisses back. “To GOD!”

The script serves up a string of unfortunate events that coincide to put Dina in the wrong car with the wrong driver at the very worst time. The running gag here is that much what goes wrong is due to a laid-back “service” culture of borderline incompetents who do not pay attention to detail.

Dina’s nosy, Islamic conservative building concierge (Bayoumi Fouad) parked her car without turning off the lights. It won’t start. A busy out-of-town businessman (Mostafa Khater) is stuck in an “unprofessional” ride-share driver’s beater, forced to wait while the boob runs in for a bathroom break. That invites a car-jacker to take over the ride. The businessman is robbed of anything that would ID him, and left to make his way to his appointment in the now-stolen car.

Dina steps into the car, thinking it’s her “Uber.” And their argument over this, neither listening to the other, leads to the wreck.

Glimpses of the writer and director’s view of modern Egypt sneak into much that happens here. The hospital insists that Dina is responsible for this stranger she brought in. The police make her cover herself in a more modest dress (off camera) before their slack-jawed chewing out interrogation over the stolen car. The real thief basically is in custody, but he walks because, again, “incompetence.”

In the best Kafkaesque nightmare, everybody wants to pass the buck. Even callous, officious Dina tries to “ditch” this unwanted “responsibility.” Repeatedly.

Exasperated Dina has to take this bearded adult-but-babbling-like-a-child, back to her apartment. But conservative Mer’i the concierge makes noise about “respectable” and what’s “not allowed” (a divorced woman bringing a man to her flat) and makes threats about who he’ll report her to.

A bribe settles his moral qualms. Bribe after bribe, as it turns out. That’s autocratic theocracy for you, Catholic Supreme Court.

Dina can’t find out who this guy is, and there’s no actual cure for an illness that is “very very rare,” the distracted and dizzy doctor lets her know. Add that to the job interview she missed, her parents’ troubles and her own issues with a possessive and hot-tempered ex.

Her “little boy?” He just wants to play with the five year-old girl next door. “Bride and groom” is her favorite game, it turns out.

That’s as daring this fairly hip contemporary comedy gets. The “kid” wants bedtime stories and cornflakes “the way mommy makes them,” and then abruptly starts hitting the clubs, dancing to Tone and I’s “Dance Monkey,” jamming out to “Seven Nation Army.”

They grow up so fast.

El Sherbiny, Khater and Fouad give this their all — or close to it. A lot of what plays out does so at high volume as everybody involved shouts through every fresh turn of events or new disagreement. But shouting can’t cover for the lack of good jokes that bedevils this picture. A chuckle here and there is all it manages, some of them coming from simple shock.

The whole bearded man playing with a little girl thing is amusing and taken right up to the line of “creepy.” And then the devout Muslim Mer’i makes it worse.

“Let them tie the knot,” he helpfully suggests, “and keep it a secret.”

Yeah. They go there.

“One Second” — all the time it takes for all these lives to be disrupted — plays like a film that started production before the script was finished. Because figuring out a (somewhat) logical way to resolve this that isn’t weird or twisted, and might be funny, proves to be impossible for both the writer and director.

They may have a little surprise to spring on us, but the picture, which never really gets going, has exhausted itself long before that arrives. And then it goes on into more unfunny and illogical minutes after that Big Reveal.

As it turns out, a sputtering anti-climax is about all this movie deserves.

Rating: TV-14, violence, adult situations

Cast: Dina El Sherbiny, Mostafa Khater, Bayoumi Fouad, Sawsan Badr, Ahmad El-Fishawi

Credits: Directed by Akram Fareed, scripted by Mostafa Hamdy. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:28

Imagine “Fire Island,” New York’s gay getaway, as a version of Jane Austen’s Bath in the early 19th century — a vacation town where all the right people mix and mingle, court, flirt and perhaps “couple.” That’s what writer and star Joel Kim Booster does for the latest among many films to use that title — and yes, there was even a TV series titled “Fire Island,” too.

Few locations are as evocative of what most everything set on “Fire Island” is about — gay love and the freedom to express it.

Booster plays Noah, sort of Jane Austen’s “Emma” transplanted to “Pride & Prejudice.” Noah is our narrator/guide to this mash-up of Austen themes and characters rendered in bitchy, banana-hammocked, molly-popping strokes on some gay friends’ “last week” at “the Gay Disney World,” as he describes it.

Plainly, Noah’s never visited Disney World in June.

Noah and four friends — Luke (Matt Rogers), Keegan (Tomas Matos), Max (Torian Miller) and Howie (Bowen Yang of “Saturday Night Live”) — gather at the home of their doting lesbian mother figure (Margaret Cho, of course) every year for a reunion/get-away and landlocked “cruise.”

They’re just five gay men, on the make from the minute they board the ferry (Shirts OFF!), ready to brave the “meat rack” of parties, drag/karaoke bars, beaches and sunsets. Erin telling them she has to sell the house she’s long invited these “poor gays” to stay in adds pathos and urgency to their “last summer” together.

As Howie is 30 and “never had a boyfriend,” that becomes Noah/”Emma’s” mission — to get shy, sweet San Francisco Howie some action.

If we’re stealing from Austen, that means Noah will also meet someone. Some suitors — rich and/or handsome — will prove to be unworthy cads, others “rude” and “snobbish” but worthy of a reassessment.

You get the drift. It’s Austen with a lot of “Who’s the ‘bottom,’ here?” jokes.

Booster folds in little digs at gay prejudices — a hierarchy that declares “No fats, no femmes, no Asians” — and lip service about not wanting to “conform to this community’s toxic body standards.”

Yeah. Right. Like the shirtless scenes, short-shorts and cut-off Ts don’t show off a sea of sixpacks.

James Scully plays Charlie, the handsome pediatrician Noah sees checking out Howie, turning Noah’s mission into both hooking Howie up and protecting him if he senses a threat from Charlie and his fellow rich snobs.

“These are not OUR people. I was just talking to a guy who thinks Lindsay Graham was in ‘The Parent Trap!'”

“Lindsay Graham in ‘The Parent Trap?’ I’d TOTALLY watch that!”

Conrad Ricamora deftly plays the bookish, aloof stuff Will (Last name “Darcy,” perhaps?) who gets under Noah’s skin as he “protects” Charlie from the lower-class gays in Noah and Howie’s “house.”

It’s all cute enough, campy enough and bawdy enough to pass muster. But when you title your film “Fire Island” you’re not just going where other films and series have gone before. You’re so “on the nose” that nothing we see will surprise.

Paper the picture with voice-over narration that hits the Jane Austen thing right on the head, right from the start, and even more predictability is built in.

That lets us anticipate too much and makes the film’s 105 minutes pass more slowly than you’d like. It “drags,” and not in a fun way.

Even the soundtrack has a banal “Heard that coming a mile off” quality. A cover of Willy Wonka’s “Pure Imagination” introduces us to the hedonistic wonderland of the island, and another cover — of Donna Summer’s gay anthem for “the club’s about to close” — ends it.

But stick around, because there’s a little mystery about what situations will be twisted into Austenesque tropes — “revenge porn,” movie star (cell phone) charades that entail reciting every line Marisa Tomei is famous for in “My Cousin Vinny,” and a dangerously uninhibited night set-off by everybody throwing all their drugs into a grab bag.

Ok, that’s NOT Austeneque. But it is funny enough, and that goes for the whole film

Yang, a stand-out in the current “Saturday Night Live” cast, plays a more toned-down character than any we’ve ever seen, which kind of misuses him. “Outrageous” is his brand. Booster makes a fine leading man, Ricamora is properly infuriating and others occasionally transcend the “types” they’re playing.

Cho is vintage Cho, loud and brash and unfiltered.

The gold standard of this sort of gay reunion romantic dramedy is still “Love! Valour! Compassion,” and Booster’s script only freshens up the situation with nudity, raw language, sex and drugs. The “camp” hasn’t changed in 25 years.

“Fire Island” manages to be just amusing enough to make one forget the other projects with the same title, even if it falls short of being the last word on the place, the scene and the sexual shorthand that title represents.

Rating: R for strong sexual content, language throughout, drug use and some nudity.

Cast: Joel Kim Booster, Bowen Yang, Conrad Ricamora, Matt Rogers, James Scully, Tomas Matos, Torian Miller, Nick Adams, Zane Phillips and Margaret Cho.

Credits: Directed by by Andrew Ahn, scripted by Joel Kim Booster. A Searchlight release.

Running time: 1:45

Mexican star Eugenio Derbez’s Hollywood films lean heavily on “sweet” and “sentimental,” which is some compensation, considering “Instructions Not Included” co-starred an adorable child, “How to be a Latin Lover” underwhelmed and “Overboard” was a dog.

They’re all slow, something that leaps back to mind as his remake of “The Valet” hits the hour mark and one wonders “Well, they’ve run out of entertainment value and this lump has another hour before the closing credits.”

Nevertheless, the script, an adaptation of a French comedy, works in some warm and almost biting commentaries on being Latino and working-poor in the City of Beautiful People, New Money and Extravagance — Los Angeles.

The set-up is that a 50something car valet tumbles into a beautiful starlet and her paramour, and they pay him to pretend to be her new beau to throw the paparazzi, and a jealous spouse, off the scent.

Derbez, sporting a haircut that doesn’t hide “60 not 50,” is paired-up with Samara Weaving (“Ready or Not”), and even having his character, Antonio, say “I’m old enough to be your father” and “Nobody will believe this” doesn’t let the picture’s miscast central premise off the hook.

But if there’s little chemistry, few funny lines and shockingly few attempts at slapstick, the idea here is to make these two very different people connect, relate and share the downsides of his life of struggle and her loveless lack of privacy.

I remember being lukewarm on the 2006 French film this is based on, so it’s not all on Derbez, Weaving, the director and screenwriters. The source material’s thin on laughs. But Derbez seems muzzled by the screenplay, and Weaving has few chances to hit the gonzo notes that made her “Ready or Not” and “Guns Akimbo” turns amusing.

Antonio rides a bicycle to work, lives in a motel that’s gone condo with his mom (Carmen Salinas) and teen son. His wife (Marisol Nichols) has left him, just the latest sign that the world has him under its heel.

Olivia Allan (Weaving) wears disguises, switches cars on her way home and lives under a microscope. Her face is on posters all over town, because her new movie “Earhart” is about to premiere.

The last thing she needs is a scandal — photographed by the paps, sneaking out of a swank hotel where she was canoodling with her married developer side-piece (Max Greenfield).

The “other” guy in those scandal sheet photos, the hapless valet, is their way out. Pay him off, show him off, maybe get him to shave that damned mustache off, and “change the subject” in a single news cycle.

“I’ve dated actors,” she tells the gossip press. “They’re too much work.”

So. A valet it is. Let the wild rumpus start.

The gold in this is in the details scattered around our ill-fated couple.

Antonio finds himself sneaking a drunken Olivia out of a premiere party, through the hotel’s kitchen, where his working class Latin compadres cheers “Viva MEXICO!” He and two valet pals
(Armando Hernández, Carlos Santos) pour her into a pickup and make their getaway.

But hey, let’s stop at the drive-through. She’s still out cold as they split the tab, counting out the ones they get in tips from parking the world’s most expensive cars at work.

The “cute” stuff about her meeting his family and neighbors has no laughs in it. That joke played.

But Antonio gets to tell the fair haired “white girl” how hard it is “being invisible” in a city where Latinos make up much of the work force, serving haughty folk who “never look us in the eye.” A running gag that’s more sad than funny — Antonio is constantly mistaken for a waiter, every where they go.

The comic stuff is kind of tired and bloodless — “What’s she see in him?” penis jokes, faked sex. But the sweet stuff, for the most part, plays. She shows up at his son’s school play — “Midsummer Night’s Dream.” Two rival private eyes (Ravi Patel, John Pirruccello) show up as well and find themselves deconstructing the play during stakeouts.

Derbez remains a likable presence, and that’s the highest praise you can throw at “The Valet” in the feeble hope that it sticks. But even “likeable” wears out its welcome when the story hits the wall at the 60 minute mark, and there aren’t enough jokes to fill a single sitcom episode.

Rating: PG-13 for sexual content, some strong language and brief drug material

Cast: Eugenio Derbez, Samara Weaving, Max Greenfield, Betsy Brandt, Amaury Nolasco and Carmen Salinas.

Credits: Directed byRichard Wong, scripted by Bob Fisher and Rob Greenberg, based on the French film by Francis Veber. A Hulu Original, by Lionsgate

Running time: 2:04

“Office” star Novak wrote, directed and stars in this dark dive into Texas conspiracyland as a big city podcaster on the trail of something stupid and dopey, or downright sinister.

He’s going to have to decide.

Issa Rae, Boyd Holbrook, Ashton Kutcher and that Dove woman (Cameron) also star in this July 29 release.

When film buffs think of scripts by Paul Schrader, they think of down-and-dirty-and-bloody tales of sins, sinners, atonement and maybe a glimpse of salvation through all the violence, revenge and sex.

And we can see Schrader (“Taxi Driver,” “Cat People,” “The Card Counter,” “First Reformed”) in the screenplay for “There Are No Saints,” a “sins of the fathers” B-movie turned into a star vehicle for Mexican-American actor José María Yazpik (“Narcos: Mexico) by equally-unknown Mexican director Alfonso Pineda Ulloa. You just have to know what to look for — a scene with a priest in a church, strip clubs, a violent man’s hopeless path to redemption.

It’s a solid-if-far-fetched B-picture peppered with excellent supporting players — Paz Vega and Shannyn Sossamon as “love interests,” Neal McDonaugh, Tommy Flanagan and Ron Perlman as heavies, with Tim Roth as a lawyer on the shady side of the street.

“Do me a favor and LOSE my f—–g number!”

Yazpik plays Neto Nientes, a hardened criminal released from prison in Texas when a cop says he put him there by faking evidence. But the assassin they call “The Jesuit” probably deserved to be inside anyway. He got his nickname thanks to his pitiless passion for torture.

The film shortchanges Jesuit history even if Schrader does not.

Neto has but one request. “I only want to see my son.” But old associates aren’t likely to leave him be, and his ex (Vega) may relent and succumb to his sexual charms, when we’ve seen the near-crucifixion he put her through pre-prison. But the goons of the Texas state police aren’t going to be as forgiving.

We have only to hear him say “I’m leaving tomorrow” to know the ambush — ambushes — are coming tonight. He stabs, snaps and shoots his way out of trouble, but the ex’s new mobster-lover (McDonough) nabs his kid (Keidrich Sellat). Neto must battle his way across the Texas borderlands, hunting for that kid, killing everybody who gets in his way.

As we know who’s in the cast, we have to figure we’re spending 85 “Saints” minutes waiting for Mr. Badass– Perlman — to show up.

Yazpik establishes his badass bonafides early enough. But Neto’s many impossibly narrow “escapes” and brutal retribution wears on a body — his and ours. The action beats hit hard. But the star is more “efficient” than compelling, an effective heavy who doesn’t quite convince us he’s leading man material.

Sossamon (TV’s “Sleepy Hollow” and “Wayward Pines”) brings a little sassy, drawling pluck the under-estimated stripper/bartender hired to help our anti-hero get close to his prey. Flanagan has a single scene as a gun dealer/intermediary Neto must get by and shop with (guns guns guns), and there are actors listed on the IMDb credits that I didn’t see in the finished film, which is seven minutes shorter than the running time listed there.

As C-movies aiming for B go, “Saints” is watchable if utterly perfunctory in between the fights. It may have “Schrader” on the credits, but there’s not enough of The Master’s Touch here to elevate the material, the leading man or the movie to where it wants to be.

Rating: R for strong and disturbing violence, language throughout, sexual content, nudity and some drug use

Cast: José María Yazpik, Paz Vega, Shannyn Sossamon, Neal McDonough, Tommy Flanagan, Karla Souza, Keidrich Sellat, Tim Roth and Ron Perlman.

Credits: Directed by Alfonso Pineda Ulloa, scripted by Paul Schrader. A Saban Films release.

Running time: 1:39

TCB, ya’ll. Mere weeks away.

Hayley Atwell, Vanessa Kirby, Rebecca Ferguson, Henry Czerny and the whole IMF, back for their finale.

Well, the first half of that finale anyway.

Epic stunts, big chases.

Big screen. Big time. July of 2023 seems a long time to wait.

That uneasy feeling that the dark, downbeat Turkish road picture “Godspeed” might be dipping into propaganda every now and again are borne out by the film’s closing credits, referring to dead Turkish troops fighting Turkish (and Syrian and Iraqi) Kurds as “martyrs.”

So whatever else “Godspeed (Yolun Açik Olsun)” has going on, there’s an Erdogan government line that’s being parroted, at least as far as the film’s combat-veterans subtext is concerned. And Turks will have to grit their teeth over non-Turkish viewers refusing to swallow their BS. We know Turkey’s record of violence against civilians and failing to admit atrocities.

So take that element of the movie with a “Well, that’s their (official) view of things” grain of salt.

Mehmet Ada Öztekin’s film of a Hakan Evrensel novel is a slow but engrossing character study on wheels, a story of post-traumatic stress dealt with on one final mission, a road trip. It’s a tale too concerned with keeping a secret that’s not a secret at all, and condoning behavior that has might warrant a police “all points bulletin” elsewhere. But it’s well-acted and quite watchable.

We meet Capt. Salih (Engin Akyürek, good) and his trusted lieutenant Kerim (Tolga Saritas, sharp) as they’re ransacking the captain’s house looking for cash. His wife Duygo (Belfu Benian) stashed it somewhere. So as soon as Salih finishes shining his shoe, he hunts until he finds a roll of bills, and they’re off.

He’s taking his personally-restored 1974 Mercedes 220 cross country to a wedding.

But the shoe he shined was on the foot of his prosthetic leg. He lost the real one to a landmine. The cash isn’t all he grabbed. He also picked up his army pistol. The car, which he restored, was the one that his parents died in. The wedding they’re attending is one Salih is hellbent on preventing.

And the reason he’s in something of a rush? He busted out of a hospital where he was in protective police custody, “under investigation.” Salih’s wife knows and she’s frantic. Her husband’s snapped.

“Godspeed” follows the grimly-focused Salih and much more laid back Kerim on a trek through mountains and arid plains, on their way to the coastal town where the wedding is scheduled. Salih is just now coming to grips with his lost limb.

“I won’t be able to play six-a-side soccer any more,” he gripes (in Turkish, or dubbed into English).

“Do you even HAVE five friends?”

We see flashbacks of the pre-combat Kerim’s life, and snippets of their combat duty — carrying out patrols, dodging friendly fire and hunting for snipers.

And we follow their post-combat odyssey, where Salih deals with intrusive “lost leg” questions from a mechanic, steals a partridge slated to be dinner from a rural shopkeeper and waves his pistol at hunters, waiters, all sorts of folks.

His wife Duygo’s search for help from the police earns a “Nobody will look” shrug from them.

This isn’t going to end well, we figure. Well, unless the picture turns more melodramatic than it already is.

“Godspeed” could do with a lot more banter between the army buddies and a lighter touch, here and there. Salih’s more human impulses — helping stranded motorists who can’t let themselves be searched at any police checkpoint, stealing that partridge — are overwhelmed by his grimly seething sense of purpose.

We quickly guess what that is, and we get it. He’s got no time for nonsense. But the whole structure of this and most any road picture has “quixotic” and “misadventure” built into it. Öztekin spends his generous allotment of screen time playing up the cynicism, reinforcing (and subtly criticizing) the acknowledged “duty” young men have to do their army service, the injustice of welfare-for-some, but not the one-legged mechanic who was never offered a state-of-the-art prosthetic leg.

The film has polish and just enough pace in between pauses for “episodes” along the way, as well as flashbacks that fill in a story we already figured out back in the first act.

But Salih’s recognizably crazy and dangerous from start to finish, and that deadens the story’s impact. We should get glimpses that he’s redeemable, bigger doses of his humanity. All we get instead are plenty of suggestions that he’s made mistakes and that he’s made up his mind, and that we should take his point and agree with it, in lock-step.

There’s bitterness and grief and guilt in ample supply. “Martyred” or not, shouldn’t we get more scenes that allow us to take a liking to this armed and dangerous headcase?

Rating: TV-MA, violence, smoking, profanity

Cast: Engin Akyürek, Tolga Saritas, Belfu Benian and
Oyku Naz Altay

Credits: Scripted and directed by Mehmet Ada Öztekin, based on a novel by
Hakan Evrensel. A Netflix release.

Running time: 1:59

It’s been all over Twitter this weekend, trending just below the latest from the pasty-faced Apartheid perv and “DOWN go the Celtics!”

Why was Peter Pan turned into the villain of “Chip’n’Dale’s Rescue Rangers?” He’s depicted as an embittered one-time child actor who “got old,” when of course, Peter Pan is “the boy who wouldn’t grow up.” Peter — voiced by comic villain par excellence Will Arnett — is having his revenge on the system (aka Disney) by kidnapping and enslaving (or worse) cartoon characters in a movie the fans aren’t shy about referring to as both a “Rangers” “reboot” and/or a “sequel to ‘Who Framed Roger Rabbit?'”

Were screenwriters Dan Gregor and Doug Mand putting one by The Mouse by making a deep-dive dig at Disney’s treatment of the voice of the original Peter Pan, Bobby Driscoll? As those deep into Disneyana know, Unsentimental Uncle Walt disposed of Driscoll, who drifted into drugs and died at 31, one of the more sad and infamous “former child star” stories in Hollywood history.

Gregor and Mand had to know, right? As online fans, who by and large endorsed the film, debate minutia like the decision to show which biologically-incompatible cartoon characters are shown to have produced offspring (“They had SEX!”), and obsess over the scores upon scores of non-Disney characters to make appearances (without being given a single funny thing to do, as I noted in my review), they’re also asking that question.

Maybe they didn’t. When I covered all things Disney — which meant reading and reviewing every new Disney biography or “tell all” to come out of that World — for the Orlando newspaper, I recall running across the Driscoll story. Uncle Walt was only sentimental about his “Nine Old Men,” the animators who crossed a picket line and helped him keep the studio running during labor strife at the House that Mickey Built in the 1940s.

Everybody else was disposable, used and tossed aside. Some of these people sued as Walt’s heirs and their company exploited their work further as TV and then the video revolution gave new value to that back catalog.

So Driscoll’s story is sad but typical, and maybe it’s a bit tasteless to do that to poor Peter in a movie, but it is what it is. Driscoll never came to my mind while watching “Rescue Rangers,” maybe Mand and Gregor forgot about him, too. And as “Peter Pan Syndrome” and the like have entered common currency, it’s possible the writers didn’t know or recall this story. Expecting today’s generation of Disney execs to know anything about the operation pre Pixar is laughable.

Like me and anybody who didn’t grow up with the 1990s TV series, that would have slipped right by them.

My guess is that the bigger jab is at fans — now in their 30s or older — still clinging to entertainment from their childhood, maintaining a stake in something that was never meant to be all that sophisticated. The “Darkwing Duck/Animaniacs” generation should be able to take a joke, and judging from the fan reaction to the film, they can.

I still say the bigger crime is casting all these characters and doing little or nothing funny with them, putting comic John Mulaney in a co-starring role and hanging him out to dry.

Has it really been 25 years since “In & Out” came, uh, “out?”

Kevin Kline won an Oscar for other work, but hell’s bells, he was never funnier than in this Paul Rudnick farce.

Debbie Reynolds playing his Mom, Joan Cusack melting down at the wedding that never was to be, conservative icon and future reverse mortgage hustler Tom Selleck normalizing gay life for a shocked, reactionary fanbase?

By the way, Selleck? The funniest he would ever be, right here in this little compact 90 minute romp that didn’t so much change America as reflect a change.

Twenty-five years in automotive and boat terms means you get a “classic” or “antique” license plate or registration. Guess what? “In & Out” is a classic, in every variation of the word.

Watching it now, it feels quaint — a time capsule of the late ’90s, its prejudices, stereotypes and worth-lampooning gay cliches. But what makes it a classic is the fact that it still plays. It’s still hilarious, and at times, just joyous to sit through.

I remember gathering with my fellow critics for a lower East Side, NY screening of the movie on the weekend it was previewed and junketed (cast gathered at a tony NYC hotel for interviews with the press). A mostly-gay and defiantly New York audience — plus critics from “the provinces” — roared the roof off at screenwriter and Premiere Magazine humor columnist Paul Rudnick’s every-gay-stereotype jabbing script, at Kline and Selleck and Reynolds doing the droll “Honey, I knew” mom thing and Cusack as the would-be bride and last to know and Ernie Sabella (Pumba in the original animated “Lion King”) starting a brawl with “Streisand is OVERrated.”

Oh. My. God.

Yes, it was a more innocent time, of show tunes jokes and “real men don’t dance” jabs and “Well, if you dress well and have good manners and a genteel sensibility and love show tunes you must be gay” messaging you could never get away with today. Never ever. Ever.

The story was inspired by Tom Hanks’ “Philadelphia” Oscar speech, “outing” his beloved acting teacher. Here, the “outer” is gauche and dopey but well-meaning former student Cameron, played with unironic perfection by Matt Dillon.

Kline is Howard Brackett, the small town drama teacher — about to marry — who sees this on TV (with his fiance) and kind of loses his mind.

Cusack plays the long-patient fiance, Bob Newhart the not-all-that-tolerant school principal.

Selleck rolls into town as a smug, smirking big-city-sophisticate/TV reporter who milks this story for all that it’s worth, perhaps with “an agenda” all his own. Howard sees through him.

 “Here, I’ll give you your headline! Howard Brackett is a big homo-queer-Mary-sissy man. He just came out at his big church wedding. Martha Stewart is furious!“

Sage, down-to-Earth character actor Wilford Brimley’s presence, playing the loving father of the outed gay Howard, speaks volumes about where we were as a country in 1997. It was time for a mainstream comedy to run with this, time for America to accept the obvious.

Needless to say, all heck breaks out in the film at this disruption — Howard protesting too much, the town recoiling and pondering and then kind of shrugging its shoulders in a way that brings tears to this day.

And damned if that Frank Oz doesn’t channel the “screwball” masters of the past as slapstick, silly and social commentary all boil over in a bubbly farce that only lets up for us to take a breath. “In & Out” rarely wastes a minute of screen time, and in one last “on-the-nose” touch gives The Village People the last word in the last scene.

Damn.

Twenty five years! Somebody should throw a party. Not in Florida, where I live, of course. Il Duce’s d-bag descendant would stamp his little feet in fascist “Don’t say GAY” fury.

“What are we all so afraid of?” would have him bursting another vein. Or into tears, the big silly. Ok, the runty and “overcompensating” silly.

For the rest of us, this now-officially-a-classic film is a reminder and a question reopened for America to answer.

Do we really want to go back to a time before “In & Out?” Will we let the most ignorant, backward and bigoted among us ordain it?

Rating: PG-13, profanity, adult subject matter

Cast: Kevin Kline, Joan Cusack, Debbie Reynolds, Tom Selleck, Bob Newhart, Matt Dillon, Ernie Sabella and Wilford Brimley.

Credits: Directed by Frank Oz, scripted by Paul Rudnick. A Paramount release on Amazon, virtually any streaming service you can name

Running time: 1:30