Trick

The moral of Jim Fall's film is that it's a good idea to wait to have sex. Sounds like a disguised piece of Christian Right propaganda, but in fact Trick is a hip, urban gay romantic comedy that falls somewhere between Jane Austen's Emma and Al Pacino's Cruising.

Gabriel (Christian Campbell), a lonely aspiring writer of musicals, gets picked up by Mark (John Paul Pitoc), a buff and over-sexed go-go dancer, on the subway soon after the two meet at a gay bar where Mark was shaking his moneymaker. Quickly falling into lust, the two descend on Gabriel's apartment for some nookie, only to be interrupted first by Gabriel's still-interested ex-girlfriend (Tori Spelling) and then by his straight roommate. The rest of the night turns into a farce of missed opportunities. As in a Victorian romance, however, postponing lust leads to love: Mark comes to value Gabriel's sensitivity and sincerity; Gabriel overcomes his objections to Mark's promiscuous past and learns to trust him.

Like the musical Titanic that Gabriel is writing, Trick has a few unintentionally corny moments, and the acting isn't always convincing. Still, this is an engagingly old-fashioned love story that explains how love can be pulled out of lust like a rabbit from a hat.

-- Nicholas Patterson