The Broken Hearts Club

Greg Berlanti's film is a notch above most other romantic comedies revolving around love, lust, and the gay male. Hunky Dean Cain (TV's Lois and Clark) and Timothy Olyphant (the menacing drug dealer in Go) play Cole and Dennis, West Hollywood roommates and serial boy bedders. That is, until Dennis suddenly realizes there is more to life than chasing buff bodies and being gay. As he struggles to define himself, he and Cole shuffle the affections of a young "newbie" from one bedroom to the next, a fellow "hag" is requested to impregnate his sister's lesbian lover, and there are numerous gatherings at the restaurant of the group's sagely, elder "hag" (a well-balanced John Mahoney). There are plenty of other man-love-life lessons in this predictable melodrama -- perhaps too many -- but the film gets by on the amiable performances and the cheeky bitch humor that should knock the boots off gay and straight filmgoers alike: if the softball games against the firemen and the geriatrics don't get you, the Karen Carpenter motif and the goofball film parodies will. Screens tonight at 7 and 9:30 p.m. and tomorrow at 12:15, 2:40, and 5 p.m.

-- Tom Meek

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Film Festival Feature Films

Shadow of the Vampire | Songcatcher | Venus Beauty Institute | What's Cooking? | The Broken Hearts Club | Envy | Goya in Bordeaux | Human Resources | Skipped Parts | Amargosa | Henry Hill | Relative Values | The Rising Place | The Contender | Pitch People | Roof to Roof | Four Dogs Playing Poker | Reckless Indifference | Requiem for a Dream | Shadow Magic | About Adam | Charming Billy | Enemies of Laughter | Into the Arms of Strangers | Running on the Sun | A Trial in Prague | Harry, He's Here to Help | A Man is Mostly Water | Seven Girlfriends

Also, Boston Film Festival short films