Robby Kendall | (Un)Free Will / 2024

down with angels, bring back the putti

by Douglas Messerli

 

Robby Kendall (screenwriter and director) (Un)Free Will / 2024 [24 minutes]

 

Having grown up to be a good non-believing son, I put little faith in angels and in particular guardian angels, although they pop up in popular films at regular intervals. Here Comes Mr. Jordan (1941) (and its remake Heaven Can Wait of 1978), It’s a Wonderful Life (1946), The Bishop’s Wife (1947), and Carousel (1956) are just a few of the films that feature those “heavenly” creatures.

      It’s hard to hate an angel when it’s Cary Grant, but I even found him to be a meddlesome creature, as lovely as his chaste romance with Loretta Young was. But in the recent short film by Robby Kendall, I felt the two meddling gay guardians absolutely detestable. In their previous lives, we’re supposed to believe, they were a quarrelling couple and now they’ve been assigned two young gay men, apparently as different as they were in their own life times.

      Hunter (Gavyn Michaels) is a handsome, immaculate, hardworking businessman, as waspy as they come, his prissy guardian TJ Wright III (Derek DeVault) as nasty and mean as any old prom queen, while Alex (Ross Hutter) is an unshaven slob of a human being, looked after by his fully frustrated angel Joey Mcgee (Brent Roberts).

      How the two central figures have come together is never quite explained, but in this film Hunter arrives to deliver up his dog for Alex to look after while he is away on a two-week business trip.

       Somehow, we’re supposed to believe, like a gay version of Felix and Oscar in The Odd Couple, these two polar opposites enjoy one another despite their radical differences. In fact, at moments it appears almost as if they might become a couple, except that Hunter’s guardian, like some wealthy maiden aunt is determined to see that his boy never mixes with the lowlife, pizza eating, and video playing wreck for whom Hunter seems to hanker after.

      As they begin an intense pre-flight conversation, the intrusive guardian TJ sets Hunter’s cellphone a-ring in order to interrupt their conversation, and although Hunter promises to call Alex, TJ does his best to make sure that the signal never properly functions.

      Meanwhile, Alex’s guardian sets him on a three-day course in order to teach him better habits of house-cleaning, scheduling, and personal hygiene that might make him the perfect match for Hunter. In fact, it seems to work and the slob almost appears presentable upon Hunter’s return.

      In his absence, moreover, Hunter has done a lot of thinking, and realizes that he would like to get to know Alex better, asking him out on a date.

      But somewhere in the back of his empty mind, Alex evidently has also held some private thoughts, and realizes that although he has worked hard to be the kind of guy who Hunter might like, he’s not really being true to himself. What self that is, it’s hard to imagine, but we have it played out when, after turning down Hunter’s gracious invitation, he turns back to his video game. Does he even have a job?

      Hunter is given the time before he’s shuttled out the door to say that he envies Alex. Alex, he argues has a choice in who and what he wants to be and do, while his behavior is all predetermined by his wealthy father, his whole life having been an attempt to please the nasty old man. Just as controlling, TJ hurries him off the set, while Alex settles down for an absolutely stupid night of pushing the video controls until his fingers freeze up.

      The credits suggest to stay tuned for further episodes, but frankly who could ever care about Alex? Or for the hard-driven Hunter for that matter? Let alone bear with any further adventures of their angelic controls? A gay Felix and Oscar makes perfect sense, although I never liked either of the central characters of that play, film, and TV series enough to really care about them either. But angels fussing around the edges of Hunter’s and Alex’ lives? Forget it! Bring back the dirty-little putti and throw them some grapes.

 

Los Angeles, January 14, 2025 / Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (January 2025).