Film Review by Kam Williams 

 

                During their college days, Ben (Mark Duplass) and Andrew (Joshua Leonard) had a reputation on campus as party animals. But that was a decade ago and since then Ben has started a career, settled down and married, while slacker Andrew has remained as wild as ever and never really amount to anything. So, it’s no surprise that the two would have drifted apart and lost touch over the intervening years.

                But then Ben and his wife (Alycia Delmore) get the shock of their lives one Friday evening when Andrew shows up at their house unannounced, looking for a place to stay. Understanding Anna agrees to let his old pal crash at their place, and even encourages them to hang out, never suspecting for a second that her faithful husband could possibly be tempted to get involved in any naughty mischief.

                However, Andrew takes Ben to an orgy being run by a lesbian named Monica (Lynn Shelton) at a den of iniquity named after Dionysus, the Greek god associated with ecstasy and indulgence. Patrons there are into very kinky forms of copulating such as the woman who likes having a dog lick peanut butter off her.

                Ben knows not only that Anna is home cooking pork chops but that they have an after-dinner date since she’s ovulating and they’ve been desperately trying to have a baby. This makes what he does next all the more bizarre when talk at the swinging soiree turns to an upcoming annual pornographic film festival.

                For, under the influence and egged on by the rest of the degenerates at Dionysus to express their longtime love for each other, Ben and Andrew on a mutual dare decide to co-star in “Tender is the Butt,“ a gay porn flick, and to enter it into competition at the so-called Humpfest. And despite being straight, they kiss each other before making plans to rent a motel room to shoot what they refer to as a homoerotic art film. Of course, Anna is furious when Ben stays out late, so he doesn’t let on that he’s about to cheat on her with another man. 

                This is the wacky point of departure of Humpday, an offbeat farce directed by Lynn Shelton who also plays Monica. Riveting, if not exactly realistic, the sitcom’s shocking subject-matter alone is probably too much for the average audience to handle. Nonetheless, very open-minded viewers are likely to find enough laughs along the way to make this raunchy romp worth it while waiting see whether Ben and Anna’s marriage can survive man-on-man infidelity once he and the truth come out.

                Gives ‘bosom buddies’ a whole new meaning!