Lez Bomb

Lez Bomb is a comedy of errors and misunderstandings that takes place over Thanksgiving. Lauren has chosen the holiday to come out to her parents. She has invited her girlfriend, Hailey though her parents assume it’s just a close friend. However, every person including Lauren herself sabotages her attempts to come out. Lauren’s male roommate shows up uninvited and her parents believe she is dating him. Then, her uncle smokes pot and ends up setting the basement on fire. Meanwhile, her grandparents think she’s having an affair. There’s also something to do with a drug cartel. The major issue though is Lauren herself doesn’t try that hard to come out. Misunderstandings and wacky large family interaction bring this simple premise to the 90 minute mark.

More than anything, Lez Bomb feels like something you’d see 20 year ago. And not even as a movie but as a holiday episode of a sitcom. Lez Bomb feels a lot like any given Thanksgiving sitcom episode except there’s a gay lead character and it’s three times the length. Despite being longer than a sitcom, all of the supporting characters still only have one character trait they get and it’s largely used for comedy. The characters feel flat and at the service of jokes. This makes it hard to care about these characters I’m spending the movie with.

This is despite the fact that Lez Bomb does have some talented actors in it. Namely, the grandparents played by Cloris Leachman and Bruce Dern. Aside from them, none of the other actors are bad at the material either. Indeed, the material itself seems like something that would work on paper. There are a lot of jokes here. But the jokes don’t land. They often feel rushed. There are so many funny moments in the script and the film doesn’t let a singular moment linger before it jumps to the next joke. The film doesn’t give me time to react nor places emphasis on particularly funny moments. It just hurtles ever forward the finish line without taking a moment to connect to the audience or let a particularly good joke land properly.

Still, the film means well. This isn’t a homophobic film by any means. My favourite scene in the film is after Lauren manages to come out and her mother talks to her the following morning. This scene has jokes and a lot of heart to it. Her mother has a line about how she’s okay with Lauren being gay but just needs some time to adjust to the idea. Then, she asks a lot of questions that veer between being funny and heartfelt. This was a sweet and funny scene where you could feel love. I liked it a lot. But to get there, we had to sit through over an hour of wacky family misunderstandings.

Maybe Lez Bomb represents some sort of equality we have been missing. Perhaps true equality is even LGBTQ* people getting broad, TGI Friday-style comedies with overdone joke set ups and humour based on wacky family members with only one personality trait. There are dozens upon dozens of movies like that for straight people so I guess it’s nice there’s at least one queer one too. Still, I don’t care to watch this genre when done for straights and having a lesbian lead character isn’t enough for me to call it good.

Overall rating: 5.0/10

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