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Man, it’s hard to remember that there was a time when the very existence of a movie like In & Out, with it’s message of tolerance for homosexuality, was some kind of radical idea. Despite falling in line with the general treatment of gay men as sweet, supportive eunuchs, In & Out gained attention for even broaching the subject. Oh, and there’s a blink-and-miss-it kiss between Kevin Kline and Tom Selleck.
Broadly written, directed, and acted by all involved, In & Out does have a few things going for it to recommend it. Kline’s lead performance finds a nice center on which it can manically spin around. Debbie Reynolds, Wilford Brimley, and Bob Newhart offer strong support ranging from Reynolds’s motherly panic and obsession with getting a wedding (who is getting married doesn’t matter, so long as she gets one), while Brimley offers quiet support and the occasional sarcastic quip. But the movie truly belongs to Joan Cusack in a comedic riff on a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Her drunken screaming for any random passerby to marry her while still wearing her wedding dress is a memorable moment, but Cusack makes the most of every moment. And Matt Dillon may just be a terribly underrated comedic actor, given not just his work here but in There’s Something About Mary a few years later.
But that’s about all In & Out really is – a broadly played sitcom expanded out to feature length and given a tony cast of players. The gay panic of the town is poked fun of, and homosexuality is presented as being another version of normal, but it would have been truly transgressive if it had displayed a fully realized gay character with sexual desires and agency. Maybe that was too much for audiences in a mainstream comedy in 1997, but Will & Grace and Queer as Folk were just around the corner on television. For good and bad, In & Out has a place in the gay film pantheon for coming out at a time in which public perception about the LGBT community started to slowly change from a negative one to a positive one.
