Mango Kiss

Mango Kiss is an oops, all gay comedy about kinky relationships. With such subject matter, it’s a real negative that the comedy is so childish.

The film focuses on two friends, Lou and Sassafrass. Soon after moving to San Francisco, Lou confesses her love to Sassafrass. Sassafrass admits she has kinks revolving around being little and Lou being her daddy. Lou is on board with this. But partially due to peer pressure from the sexually open queer community, it doesn’t stop there. Lou and Sassafrass agree to open their relationship. The main rule is Sassafrass can’t have another Daddy and Lou can’t have another little.

Mango Kiss is not a deep movie. It leans heavily into stereotypes. For some of the queer community, it’s at least a little self aware. Lots of the lesbians they meet are lesbian stereotypes that absolutely exist in reality and are exaggerated for comedy. However, even here, some of these stereotypes are not accessible. Some characters feel very specific to 2000s San Francisco queer culture. It’s not the 2000s anymore and I don’t live in San Francisco. So any comedy here didn’t really land.

When the film gets into the kink stuff, it doesn’t feel like the comedy is coming from a place of knowledge. It feels a lot more like one constantly repeating punchline about how sometimes people do weird stuff for sex. And really, this should be easy comedy. Sex is weird and hilarious. So is kink. But without any depth or attempt to find a different punchline, it feels like a sex joke written by a teenager.

Seriously, 50 Shades of Grey is a better depiction of kink than Mango Kiss. For one thing, it’s only ever foreplay. Immediately after Sassafrass and Lou’s discussion of enjoying daddy/little roleplay, we cut to a sex scene. And they’re just having normal sex. That’s true with every sex scene. Kink seems at most like something for foreplay. And even as foreplay, it’s just stuff like Lou putting on a hat or Sassafrass acting like a child. Not that it needed to go this direction, but Mango Kiss is one of the least sexy depictions of kink I’ve ever seen. For a comedy movie, that shouldn’t be a problem. But it’s not funny either.

Mango Kiss is a comedy with not nearly enough punchlines. Most of the film boils down to gay people are sometimes stereotypical and kink is inherently comedic and kind of cringe. There doesn’t seem to be nearly enough insight into the kink aspect specifically for the film to craft any funny jokes about it.

Overall rating: 3/10

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