Let me begin at the beginning. I’ve heard that this is a great place to start. It can get a little complicated. Spoiler AlertThe tearjerkingly beautiful, new romantic dramedy by The Big SickDirector Michael Showalter is the beginning, which turns out to be the end only to ouroboros.
Starring Jim ParsonsThe Big Bang TheoryBen Aldridge (Fleabag) as Michael and Kit (yes, Knight RiderThere are many jokes that happen. A couple who is diagnosed with cancer together could be described as a “jokester”. Spoiler Alert doesn’t play it straight… but that might be one gay pun too far. Let’s just be honest, I was happy with the offbeat and meta moves this movie made when it could have easily chosen to be much lazier.
What’s Spoiler Alert about?
Based on Michael Ausiello’s memoir, Spoiler Alert: The Hero Died, The movie follows Michael, an overworked worker who meets his love in a coworker’s drag him to the bar for a night of jock. Michael meets Kit (Aldridge), a beautiful, confident dancer with Nina M. James) once he arrives at the bar. They quickly become friends and begin to have a conversation. Kit laughs in the right places, and it’s soon over. It’s more than a jock-barhouse beat that throbs in the air.
All things considered, the boys are slow to get to know each other. Kit and Michael first meet cutely and then go their separate ways. The movie moves confidently forward to show their walls falling down. Both Kit’s inadequacy feelings and Michael’s problems with commitment seem to melt in each other’s presence. It’s an incredibly sweet scene that shows them discovering the best parts of their selves through one another. Michael’s steady presence is instrumental in Kit finally coming out to his parents (Sally Field, Bill Irwin). And before you know it, closets are being cleared, years are passing, eyes are wandering and tempers flaring…
Let’s take a step back, just like the movie. Before a single iota Michael and Kit’s romance was delivered to us, before the jock parties, coming-outs and the heady stuff that comes with a long, happy life together, the film has already flash-forward to its unhappy diagnosis. The beginning. Spoiler Alert The ghoulish specter that haunts Christmas Future, a ghost unwelcome in the future, blankets their banter and antics with the ghostly specter grief. Sidenote: This film is 100% a Christmas movie. From one angle, this entire movie could be framed as a death dream, a paroxysm of a brain as it blinks out — the gay (well gayEr) All That Jazz.
That’s perhaps a lot of Brechtian existentialism to pin on this big-hearted, old-fashioned, and sometimes too-sitcommy-for-its-own-good little drama. But all of that is what the film’s title itself refers to: the “Spoiler” being the oncoming sickness. It’s a film that steps outside of itself to comment on itself on more than one occasion. So why not? It is, after all, strained of me to criticize a movie for being “too sitcommy for its own good” when it uses an actual sitcom within its narrative as a storytelling device. Screenwriters David Marshall Grant and Dan Savage (yes, that Dan Savage) haven’t gone quite so far as to craft the self-referential equivalent of what ScreamIt was for slasher movies but Spoiler Alertis aware of the existence of other tearjerkers and their content. Check out the Terms of Endearment reenactment that’s featured prominently in the film’s trailer,Or the casting Steel Magnolia Field is another mother who has been left behind.
Spoiler Alert This love story has a circular structure that gives it its spark.
Spoiler AlertIt might seem to end up in front but it does so the same way that a magician uses a wave hand to direct our attention so it can slip into our hearts on the backside. You might even say — if you were speaking to your film studies professor, anyway — that there’s a queering of the heteronormative structure happening here, with the surface layer of the story we’ve seen a million times gaining new meaning through a freshly flipped perspective. And given the fact that this is a mainstream gay romance between two men, it’s safe to say some “queering” was called for.Still, Spoiler Alert could’ve just taken the easier route, plunking two dudes down into the straightforward story we’ve seen Julia Roberts, Campbell ScottIt has probably worked out well for us in the past. It would have been a lot less bizarre, more surprising, and ultimately, less dangerous without taking the small risks that it does. So, I give props to it. Spoiler AlertYou are more than that.
I haven’t read his memoir, but the fact that Michael Ausiello is a real-world, internet-famous writer who got his start recapping television shows — the modern equivalent of every rom-com heroine working at a fashion magazine, for sure — seems to have given this story its meta-fictional out. The fact that our narrator is a person who has made his mark deconstructing the stories of previous storytellers makes it interesting. Spoiler Alert’s playful form make sense. Ausiello retells his love story with the benefit and curlicues creative touches.
All of this may sound distracting but the film is easy to watch and simple enough to follow in practice. If you’re just looking for a good tearjerker, Spoiler AlertWill make you cry but it is good. There was a quiet moment late in the film where the communal sound of the sniffling, sobbing audience surrounding me reminded me why we should still have access to movies that aren’t about superheroes at the multiplex. Studio, let’s get our cries on together!
Setting up its destination at the front allows the film the freedom to take its time making us first fall for Michael, Kit, and Michael and Kit together, before we get where we know we’re going. The tension in our minds gives the romantic fumblings a weight that is more than broad. Jokes about Smurf toys in a bedroom killing the mood.
Spoiler Alert It is a romantic comedy that features two outstanding performances by Jim Parsons (and Ben Aldridge).
As Michael, Parsons is softer, sweeter, and more endearingly goofy than I’ve seen him before. As his love affair with Aldridge opens him up, he becomes more and more comfortable with us. Aldridge is the film’s star. Aldridge is the star of the film. His Kit is a difficult man to fall in love with. He has charm, a big smile and lots of difficulties. We watch as their first blushes of attraction deepen and they navigate the road of living together. Spoiler AlertThe film sees both the short- and long-term with equal clarity. It can even help us to recognize the unexpected transitions between one and the other. The film can also understand how we feel when we realize that we have crossed the threshold three weeks ago. And then what the hell do we do with all of this now that it’s here?
Of course, all of that’s wiped away once mortality smashes itself through the door. Time is broken from start to finish. What’s best about Spoiler AlertIt pauses for a moment to assess the silences that are needed, and I’m thankful Showalter does this multiple times.
In particular, there’s a scene played without words at a transformational moment in the story, where Michael and Kit react to real bad news by taking photographs of one another as their stiff lips crumble. This is enough to say enough about genuine intimacy for a dozen movies: The deep comfort between these people; their ability speak encyclopedias without saying a single word. This movie captures it perfectly. And as we look at the news and see LGBTQ+ people being gunned down for simply loving in public spaces, perhaps we could all use our own transformational moments of silence — and love stories like Spoiler Alert We are told to keep loving until we see someone, and somebody listens.
Spoiler AlertOpening in select theaters December 2, and expanding nationwide Dec. 16.
