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Review

A great script and irresistibly charming characters help make this low-budget indie comedy — about the tangled love lives of two off-the-wall slackers — one of the funniest gay films in years. Johnny and Wiley (directors/screenwriters Pritikin and Rosen) are two Chicago hipsters lost in their own worlds. Wiley is a bespectacled Woody Allen-like closet case and cynic who spends his days working in a used book store and his nights gauging the potency of male porn mags on his libido. Wiley reads from a pulp book he picks up called "The Homesexual," it says "The homosexual is forced to run from penis to penis until his violent death." This nebbish agonizes over everything, when debating restaurant choices, he says, "I'm boycotting Spanish restaurants because of the inquisition." His straight best pal Johnny, a hopelessly naive music store employee and rock star wannabe, is stuck with the idea that his loser “manager” Murray has made his self-financed record a hit — in Greenland. Wiley, who has never actually slept with another man, let alone gone into a gay bar, finally realizes that Johnny is the man to introduce him to the pleasures of gay sex.

Filmed entirely during winter in the north Chicago neighborhood of Wicker Park and with the entire cast sporting not only strong Chicago accents, but non-movie-star looks, Totally Confused makes for rare queer entertainment. Out-of-the-mainstream and not pretty, these boys will make you laugh. A local rock-n-roll soundtrack from Rox Daisy ads to the great Chicago feel. Totally Confused is a bisexual romp that will seduce the viewer with its belly laughs and its warm feel.

 -- Raymond Murray