Remember the controversy over the initial trailer for "The Dilemma," the Ron Howard film starring Vince Vaughn and Kevin James? It had the joke in which Vaughn's character, Ronny, says that "Electric cars are gay. I mean, not homosexual gay, but my-parents-are-chaperoning-the-dance gay." After GLAAD (the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, in case you don't know) complained, the studio removed the joke from the trailer but deferred to director Howard, who wouldn't remove it from the film itself because of artistic integrity or something. I wasn't thrilled by that, though I can understand someone not wanting to be harassed into making changes they feel aren't warranted. But Vaughn made some comments in response to the uproar that really turned me off, and I decided that I did not want to pay money to see this movie.
Still, I was a little curious. So when I went to see "The King's English" last week, I "multiplexed." That's the term I use for "sneaking into another theater to see a second movie without paying." It's something I've only done a couple of times, and once it was just to re-watch the end of another movie I had already seen (and paid for). But Hollywood owed me one for over two years: "The Spirit" was such complete garbage that I walked out more than halfway through. With "The Dilemma," I collected.
Well, I collected in that I stayed throughout the entire film. But it wasn't easy.
The film's premise is that Ronny and his best friend Nick (James) are partners in an auto design firm who get a meeting with GM to make a pitch for an electric car that seems like a muscle car. Hence the "electric cars are gay" joke --
