In the last few years, there has been an explosion in gay-themed romantic comedies. Some of them turn on AIDS-related themes ("Jeffrey", "Love! Valor! Compassion!"), or ignore it completely ("I Think I Do", "Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss") while others add the "single girl with gay friend" mix ("The Object of My Affection", "Threesome"). Now comes "trick", which was a Sundance sensation, has been receiving moderate to awesome reviews and boasts the "biggest gay-themed independent film opening weekend" - but is it any good?

Cautiously, I think so.

Taking a dash of "After Hours", screenwriter Jason Schafer and director Jim Fall (a theater director making his motion picture debut) have fashioned an intimate and largely crowd-pleasing comedy about the travails of dating. The fact that the two parties in this possible love affair are both male is a fact that is almost ignored entirely - indeed, the kinds of hoops the two have to jump through in order to make sense of their relationship are the kinds of obstacles that most other romantic comedies consider their staples in the trade. This is just the first trick this film pulls on its audience.

Gabriel (Christian Campbell) is a somewhat shy, insecure wannabe musical writer trying to eke out a living in New York city and find a meaningful relationship for himself. His constant companion is Katherine (Tori Spelling), an aspiring singer/actress with no particular talent nor skill but that of tireless self-promotion and a truly delusional state of mind. After being quietly encouraged by his friend Perry (Stephen Hayes) to re-word a key song in his musical work-in-progress - the lyrics are hollow given Gabriel's empty emotional life - Gabe heads to a randy gay bar where the sight of an unbelievably gorgeous go-go boy both attracts and frightens him. Later, on the subway, the aforementioned toy boy makes a pass at Gabe, and before long, Mark (John Paul Pitoc), is on his way back to Gabe's apartment for what both assume will be a one-night stand. Things don't turn out quite the way they're supposed to, of course, as the duo's hunger for physical satisfaction is constantly thwarted by well-meaning and oblivious friends, jealous ex-lovers and one tremendously angry drag queen. Without a place nor opportunity to be alone, the two fall into conversations that reveal too much about themselves as individuals, and by the time the night is almost over, Gabe and Mark realize that while they may not have succeeded in their quest for sex, the rewards of the night may be infinitely more rewarding than they could have ever expected.

With a simple set-up and a keen ear for dialogue, Jason Schafer's script is a thrilling exercise in making mediocre material involving and compelling for an audience tired of cliches. There's really nothing terribly new nor exciting in any of the scenes presented here in terms of its writing, but the way everything is held together by dialogue that sounds realistic and cogent makes the primary material of the film very strong indeed. Director Jim Fall has a good eye for casting, and he's struck gold with his three leads.

Neve Campbell's impossibly angelic-looking older brother Christian plays the gauche Gabriel with just the right amount of awkward sweetness and burgeoning self-confidence that makes the character instantly likeable. One secret to Campbell's success in this film is that his looks are a trick: there's a scene in the film where Gabriel is dragged into a dance club full of half-naked, robustly muscular men dancing and feels too shy and insecure to remove his own clothing that is a particularly effective showcase for Campbell's thespian skills. Unlike his highly over-rated younger sister (whose success continues to baffle me), this is an actor who is capable of turning in an interesting performance without being too obvious about it. Even better at the subtlety department is debuting actor John Paul Pitoc, whose character Mark is sex on legs personified. Imperceptibly softening as the film progresses, Pitoc manages to reveal layers to what could have been a badly mangled character in the hands of a lesser actor. The two leads share an electric chemistry that never lags even when the film takes too long to get going at some points, or when it takes an unnecessary detour on some random trajectory. It helps that both actors are ably supported by Tori Spelling. In the little-seen, severely under-appreciated "House of Yes", Spelling revealed herself to possess a talent for comic timing; this gift is fully exploited here as she turns Katherine into a loveable monstrosity of a best friend - too self-involved to be reliable, yet too self-less to be loathed. However, Spelling's effectiveness may be a trick as well: the scene where she vocally and physically assaults a would-be show tune is played so well that I could not quite decide if she was deliberately being bad, or whether she could not help but be bad - I guess old rumors are hard to shake. The rest of the ensemble - Clinton Leupp as drag queen Ms. Coco Peru (and here's another trick of the movie: Ms Peru is a drag version of Ms Spelling!), Lorri Bagley as a strangely beguiling Monroe clone, Brad Beyer as Gabriel's boorish roommate and Stephen Hayes as Gabriel's flaming queen, torch song belting friend - all perform very well under Fall's steady direction.

There's a lot of energy and charm in "trick", and because there's no overt sex and hardly any nudity in the film, it remains a quaint, almost old-fashioned, love story. Late in the film, just before the credits roll over the closing shot of a dewy dawn in the New York City immortalized by Woody Allen and Blake Edwards' "Breakfast at Tiffany's" (as opposed to the one favored by the likes of Scorsese), a very surprising thing happens in this story of two sex-starved men looking to consummate their passion - a real romantic moment occurs. And it turns out to be the most romantic moment I've seen committed on film this year - how's that for a real trick of a movie?

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