Film Review: SINGLE ALL THE WAY (2021): A Same-Sex Holiday Rom-Com with Tons of Cheer

Single All the Way Review

Single All the Way (2021) Film Review, a movie directed by Michael Mayer, and starring Michael Urie, Philemon Chambers, Luke Macfarlane, Barry Bostwick, Jennifer Robertson, Madison Brydges, Alexandra Beaton, Jennifer Coolidge, Kathy Najimy, Dan Finnerty, Steve Lund, Melanie Leishman, Gryffin Hanvelt, Viggo Hanvelt, Sefano DiMatteo, and Victor Andrés Trelles Turgeon.

This high-octane Christmas romp is about taking risks in relationships, based on placing trust in those around you. The plot centers on an L.A.-based social media strategist, Peter, played by Michael Urie. Meaningful romantic relationships seem to elude Peter, but not for lack of trying, and despite his family’s heartfelt concern for his future as a lonely bachelor.

To give his family peace of mind — and maybe just a little peace and quiet for himself, and good luck with that — he convinces his roommate and best friend Nick, portrayed by Philemon Chambers, to accompany him to the family gathering in New Hampshire and pose as his boyfriend. Kathy Najimy plays Carol, Peter’s ‘cool mom,’ has arranged a blind date for Peter in the meantime with her gym instructor, James, played by Luke Macfarlane, and the game is on. The ultimate goal is to get Nick and Peter married by any means necessary, not much short of a shotgun wedding.

It’s all hi-jinx, earnest advice-giving, and spirited sabotage that prevails throughout the family’s propaganda. Peter’s teenaged nieces, Daniela and Sofia, nicely performed by Brydges and Beaton respectively, sweet-natured and cool, are probably the most cunning perpetrators (but they’re ‘at that stage’). For example, they think nothing of stranding Nick on a rooftop during a TaskRabbit job until he promises to tell Peter he’s in love with him.

(Incidentally, the principal love interests each have a second job, one’s they prefer over the paying-rent kind: Peter’s avocation is gardening; Nick wrote a popular children’s book but has writer’s block over the sequel; James is a ski instructor.)

James doesn’t have a chance, and he gets wise fast. In addition to hot pecs and biceps he has good sense and a better sense of humor, especially when Peter’s sister Ashleigh, portrayed by Melanie Leishman, “accidentally” dumps a full tray on him, loudly blames Peter for pushing her, and then for good measure, follows up with a barrage of wonderfully absurd anecdotes, announcing triumphantly that Peter can’t be trusted farther than one can see him.

Some measure of hyperbole is essential to rom-coms, especially holiday ones in which miracles can, and often do, happen. The dashes of slapstick and overstatements are part of the fun, because everyone ends up sanitized by noble intentions. When the scheming is at its worst, the standard Hallmark uplift is still in play. This is a remarkably energized production; people rarely stay still. There are virtually no pauses in the dialog; it oozes repartee.

Yet there are passages of quiet sincerity as well. Barry Bostwick plays Peter’s laid-back father, Harold, who cottons to Nick, in part because he’s so handy (the traditional ‘guy thing’), but also because he believes Nick is the best thing for his son and tells him so — in a sense, giving his ‘permission’ to marry, if only casually.

There’s plenty eye-candy, with beefcake in the very first frame (all of it from the waist-up), and one gratuitous shot each of James and Nick, possibly in deference to their ‘competition.’ But nothing steamy; it’s all good, clean fun, without sexual innuendo. ‘Second base’ is as far as it goes — this is a romance, after all, and this film sticks to those rules like tape on wrapping paper.

The acting in general is good all around; as often as not this film appears more sit-com than rom-com. Emotional expression is topical, ranging from warm indignation to amicable jibes to stagey hilarity, squeezed between the banter, appropriately glib with precise timing; there isn’t a wasted moment in word or deed.

One character stands out, however: Aunt Sandy, portrayed by the redoubtable Jennifer Coolidge. Not precisely as the voluptuous matriarch she appears; more like an Earth Mother channeling Isadora Duncan — chin aloft, misty eyes gazing into the cosmos, declaiming peculiar aphorisms as she strides around meaningfully. But as director of the town Christmas play from her own pen, she exchanges Isadora Duncan for Otto Preminger. She consigns younger family members to a rather surreal performance of the Nativity, entitled “Jesus H. Christ.”

Among the festive hullabaloo, though, Peter remains in his dilemma, which begins to converge: love and geography. Family and romance. Should he risk the security of Nick’s long friendship for romantic love with him that could last a lifetime — or lose both?

This is the question that rom-coms are destined to answer, because need for intimate contact reaching beyond the physical is the whole point. In the long run, the genders of the couple don’t matter a hill of beans. Single All the Way makes damn good work of this, quite enjoyable on its own terms; it obeys its own logic. Now and again the pacing gets a little frantic, and sometimes the continuity is a little choppy. At the end of the day, the movie remains true to the rom-com universe; a quasi-reality where the conflicts are outlined, simplified, magnified, and that risks are often opportunities in disguise.

Rating: 7/10

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