Review of In And Out

Introduction

In and Out is a whimsical and gentle comedy about a teacher in a small American town called Greenleaf. When a former student becomes an actor and wins an oscar, he thanks his teacher Howard Millman (Kevin Kline) and then pronounces to the world that Millman is gay. The first act sets this up well as we get to know the characters, the second act is by far the funniest as the media and the Greenleaf locals’ attention is pointed towards Howard – questioning if he is or not. And Kline plays this marvellously – its never overstated in any mannerisms, but is enough to keep you, like the rest of the village guessing. The standout scene in this is when he gets a Know Your Masculinity tape, which plays “I Will Survive”. The tapes instruction is to avoid dancing at all costs “Real Men Don’t Dance!!” However this is too much for Howard to resist. Wonderful!

It really falls short in the third act however. Without ruining the plot, the film tries to re-enact the final scenes of Dead Poets Society with Scent of a Woman and still keep the light-hearted tone of the rest of the film. This just doesn’t work and seems very hammy and corny. All aspects are tied up too nicely, and this is a pity because a lot of the humour of In and Out is quite acerbic.

Video

The picture is framed at 1.78:1 anamorphic widescreen and is generally watchable. This is a picture that should look good on DVD – the “cleanliness” of the village being shown well on this format. Skin tones are excellent, but there’s nothing here that will tax your decoder to strongly. I was disappointed however at the opening of the film. There was a lot of speckles in evidence, which just shows that this has been transferred from film stock without any cleaning up operation at all. Luckily the print this is taken from is mainly clean and free of artefacts, still, a slight disappointment there.

Audio

The Dolby Digital 5.1 surround of this film was never really going to set your system alight – gentle comedies just don’t lend themselves to it very well. A couple of scenes do get going, the Oscar film shown at the start and the Know Your Masculinity section both show evidence that the DD mixer was awake during these two sections… however he fell back to sleep for the remainder of the film. Voices are clear and the gentle music eases its way out of your main LR speakers. For the majority of the film however your sub and rears will have little to do.

Features

A trailer and that’s it.

Conclusion

There’s a lot to like here. Kline plays his “is he isn’t he?” role very well, and the majority of the lead players help rather than hinder this performance. Whilst I was on my way to giving this film a good recommendation I’m afraid that the final act really does spoil it for me. It has been done better and less patronisingly than this one. Considering some of the well-developed humour from the rest of the film I expected more. The picture and sound aren’t knockout but are clean and clear enough, and there are no discernable extra features. So this is one you either love and will buy it anyway, or will just be left on the shelf. Your choice.