There's a richly promising premise here that, amazingly, few other coming out films have tackled: how do you come out without losing your best buddies, especially if they're regular working-class, beer-drinking, pussy-chasing guys. Unfortunately, Fourth Man Out doesn't manage to negotiate the territory without resorting to the most annoying and lazy stereotypes. So just about every other gay man that our hero Adam meets is a snippy queen. And the only one that's not a snippy queen is a lying, cheating, sleazy douche-gag. Okay, this is a comedy, but seriously... does the core audience for this kind of film really find the pretentious fairy that amusing? The chorus of straight best friends are no less stereotypical, but somewhat better drawn, and the humour less forced. Still, Fourth Man Out never quite lives up to its early promise, and the definitive film about how best buddies survive one of them coming out is still to be written.
Review of Fourth Man Out
