Quick(?) review: Make The Yuletide Gay

"Make The Yuletide Gay" is probably destined to become a yearly holiday tradition on Logo, the gay cable network. (Pause for some enterprising TLA Releasing person to edit that into "'Destined to become a holiday tradition!' - Joe Guckin, The Joe In Philly Experience!" and put it on the DVD cover, or at least in print ads. There. My naked bid for attention is complete.)

This film screened at the Philadelphia QFest (which used to be called the Philadelphia International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival, which led to the unfortunate acronym of PIGLFF) but I was unable to attend the two scheduled showings. Fortunately, the film was named a Festival Favorite and was shown again on the final night of QFest.

College sweethearts Olaf "Gunn" Gunnunderson and Nathan Stanford are headed to their respective family homes for the Christmas holiday. Nathan then finds out that his parents (including Gates McFadden of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" fame) won a trip to Israel and conveniently forgot to inform him until the day before his flight home. Rather than stay in an empty home, Nathan decides to make the trip to Wisconsin and surprise Gunn, only to be surprised himself: his boyfriend, out and proud on campus, isn't out to his family. Gunn's dad is a stoner and his mom is a Christmas freak, dontcha know (she talks like that); she's constantly spouting double-entendres and trying to fix her son up with Abby, a girl he dated in high school. (Abby's mom is played by Alison Arngrim -- Nellie Oleson from "Little House on the Prairie, and that fact is referenced in the movie.) It started a little slow for me, but got funnier as it went along. It plays out sort of as you'd expect, but with enough odd twists to keep it interesting. Nathan is played by Adamo Ruggiero. Adamo was Marco, a teenager who came out of the closet on "Degrassi: The Next Generation" -- what is it with the "Next Generation" trend? Now he's 23, utterly adorable (just look at that photo), out of the closet in real life also, and as of the time this profile appeared, still single. Call me, Adamo! I gave you a blurb for the DVD box, so you owe me! My grade: B-plus.