2008 // Canada // Laurie Lynd // March 18, 2009 // Theatrical Print
[Breakfast with Scot was screened as a part of QFest 2009.]
C - Given that the film plays as a conventional family comedy, the set-up of Laurie Lynd's Breakfast With Scot requires a convoluted flowchart: Eric and Sam, a straight-laced gay couple, take in Sam's brother's dead ex-girlfriend' son, Scot. Got it? It turns out that the titular eleven-year-old is swishier than his new guardians, which leads to tension vis-à-vis the nominally straight face Eric prefers to present to the world, to say nothing of the perils of raising a manifestly gay preteen. Mild and sweet and ultimately forgettable, the film is strongest when it keeps the focus on Noah Bernett's oddly charming performance as the uber-girly and somewhat oblivious Scot, and on the paralyzing complexity of Eric's reactions to responsibility. Unfortunately, the story is unfocused, pivoting between the Gay Story and Adoption Story flavors of melodrama with a distinct ungainliness, and frittering time away on peripheral characters and subplots for thin sitcom chuckles. Ultimately, the film sweeps away all conflicts with the tidiness of an after-school special, which does a disservice to its ostensible aim to humanize the struggles of gay parents and gay kids. Still, LGBT-friendly family comedies are a rare breed, and they don't come much more benign than this.
