G.B.F. is smart and hilarious fluff, gleefully playing with every gay and high school cliché out there, and then some. Three flavours of Alpha Bitch (four if you count Soledad)? All yours. Pop culture shoutouts left and right? You got it. Sexually repressed and/or closeted Mormons? That’s a check. It does get a little bit too earnest at times, when pleading for the end of labels and how we’re all human and blah blah blah; but aside from that the laughs never stop.
Shy nerd Tanner is always first in line to get all the latest gadgets, but has no intention of being the first kid to come out at his high school. But then his rather more flamboyant friend Brent learns about the latest hot accessory: the Gay Best Friend, which no cool girl should be without! One thing leads to another, as they do in comedies like this, and Brent’s plan to leap out of the closet and be the most in-demand G.B.F. ever backfires spectacularly with Tanner getting outed to the whole school.
It’s rough at first being the only out gay kid in school: not only do jocks want to beat him up, but the Gay-Straight Alliance’s obnoxious president wants him to join her group and give her life meaning. But when the school’s three head girls start hanging out with him and protecting him from the jocks, Tanner realises it’s not so bad.
You know how the rest goes, right? Popularity—not to mention the promise of a hot British date for prom—starts getting to Tanner’s head and he forgets his old friends, Brent is bitter and lonely and forced to watch Brokeback Mountain with his aggressively gay-friendly mom (and may I say that Megan Mullally is as awesome as ever), the head bitches and their allies square off for a massive war centered on the prom, Brent plots to ruin Tanner’s evening by dumping glitter on him, Carrie-style, but of course he decides against it at the last second and the two reconcile.
I absolutely loved this film. It’s hilarious, excellently paced, nicely acted (again, props to Megan Mullally), and did I mention hilarious? Absolutely everything is played for laughs, even things that really shouldn’t be (high school closets, the need for GSAs) and you know what? That’s exactly what I needed. As much as I love the dramas and documentaries, this movie was a breath of fresh, sassy air.