Monika Mitchell | John Apple Jack / 2013

shallow talk

by Douglas Messerli

 

Rick Tae, Monika Mitchell and Corey Tong (screenplay), Monika Mitchell (director) John Apple Jack / 2013

 

Monika Mitchell’s Canadian feature, John Apple Jack is the kind rom-com that Hollywood has been putting out for decades, at least as far back as the Doris Day/Rock Hudson comedies—except for the fact that in this case it stars two gay men, turning it more into a kind of Tony Randall/Rock Hudson movie that Down with Love pretended to be.

      I suspect the Day/Hudson association is why the standard tag to the film reads: “A playboy learns to love, while a virgin learns to live.” Although there is no reason to describe the rich boy of a restaurant owner John Jardine (Chris McNally), who camps out in his father’s high rise offices where he is regularly sucked off under his desk by a young Asian man, Marco Chow (Alvin Tran), can hardly be described as a “playboy.” And the Asian chef, working at Jardine’s, Jack Gaang (Kent S. Leung), who has loved John since they were children, does not at all seem to me to be a virgin.

     Jack is primarily confused. Believing he has fathered a child with Vivienne Jardine (McKenzi Scott), with whom he has been living with her for several years, and now they intend to marry. After all, her father might even help him get out of the kitchen and establish his own Western-Eastern fusion restaurant. He is ambitious and evidently is willing to remain in the closet for the rest of his just for his career.

     Suddenly the callous John realizes that not only is his boyhood love working as a chef in his own restaurant kitchen, but is going to marry his sister.

      If you find all of this a bit unbelievable I don’t blame you. I don’t think that most restaurateurs have high-rise executive offices and provide their sons with expensive apartments, but it’s even more difficult to imagine that the glib would-be gay playboy would know absolutely nothing about his own father’s staff (Jack has been working at the restaurant, John is told, for 8 years) and has been living with his sister. But then, the Jardine’s are a family out of hell, the mother Monique being about as empty-headed and confused as anyone can imagine, the sister perfectly happy to marry a gay man, and the son a heartless gay rich boy. Only the father, Renard (Drummond Mcdougall) appears to have any intelligence and talents. At least he seems to be able to make money.

     John is so unaware of the world around him that he doesn’t even realize that not is his family all aware of his being a gay man, but the restaurant staff, many of whom he has slept with, and all the restaurant’s customers know.

     Of course, the minute he again encounters Jack, he suddenly realizes that he is still in love. Now all he has to do is convince him that he is not going to treat him only a one-night stand.

      When Vivienne realizes that her future husband has again slept with her brother, she moves out with her son, making it clear that they were both drunk the night of little Oli’s conception, and he was probably not even the father.

     The movie should have broken down right here. Vivienne has lied, John is a selfish “playboy,” the mother is a loon. Jack needs to move on.

    But then, the writer’s surely realized, they wouldn’t have a feature movie. More than a little bit incredible, Jardine senior decides that his daughter should have her revenge on her Jack and John simultaneously; he’s already fired Jack, locked him out of his apartment, and forced him onto the streets!

     Vivienne returns to Jack, now insisting on the marriage immediately. Wedding planners are called, the ceremony is booked, and Jack is again hopeful that Vivienne’s father might bankroll his new endeavor.

     By this time any intelligent viewer has become fed up with all the film’s characters. But John is suddenly transformed, redeeming himself after, he claims, having learned his lesson. He is, so he now insists, truly in love with Jack, outrunning Marco and others who have been hired to prevent him to stop the ridiculous wedding.

        Even her young son, Oli, wonders why his mother is marrying Jack, although why he believes his uncle should marry Jack instead is beyond explanation, particularly since he hasn’t seen his uncle for ages and Jack has served for the past few years as his father.

        Inevitably John arrives in the nick of time, screams out his love for Jack, and Vivienne gladly gives him up. The two marry and quickly establish John Apple Jack’s, Jack’s fusion eatery. The apple, incidentally, derives from the fact that early on Jack, furious with John’s selfish behavior, tosses an apple at him that creates a large bruise on his forward that he sports for most of the rest of the movie.

        We’re supposed to believe, I presume, that the two men now live happily ever after, but given John’s narcissism and Jack’s focus on his career, I wouldn’t place in any bets on their future anymore that could ever believe that Hudson and Day might actually share a bed.

 

Los Angeles, July 19, 2026

Reprinted from My Queer Cinema blog (July 2026).