Product Details

• Actors: Jeff Garlin; Dev Kennedy; Michael McDonald; Pete Jones; Stoney Westmoreland; Nathan Fillion; Julie R. Pearl; Steve Dahl; Dana Gilhooley
• Directors: Pete Jones
• Format: Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.66:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: WOLFE VIDEO
• DVD Release Date: October 30, 2007
• Run Time: 86 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000UX6NU8
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #52,012 in Movies & TV (See Bestsellers in Movies & TV)

Editorial Reviews

Review
Intelligent, nicely paced script sports lots of crowd-pleasing zingers. --Variety

Product Description
When regular guy Bobby (Pete Jones) tells his meat and potatoes Irish-Catholic brothers that he is gay, they don t believe him!

An Irish Catholic family learns that the youngest son is gay. Self-accepting Bobby Riley, a Chicago architect, tells us right off the bat he's gay. But he s never told his three brothers. Bobby s relationship with them is close but centers around sports, drinking beer, and playing practical jokes not discussing private lives. And besides, Bobby appears to have a girlfriend, but actually Carly is a lesbian pal who plays along when he needs a date. Only Bobby s sister knows the truth about his life.

But now, Bobby s parents are both dead, and his sister has begun pressuring Bobby to come out of the closet. Bobby and his live-in boyfriend Andy would like nothing more than to drop the charade Bobby maintains with his lesbian pal, so he finally gets up the courage to do it. But when Bobby does spill the beans, his brothers assume due to his regular-guy demeanor that he's kidding. Besides, they're meat and potatoes Irish-Catholic, so Bobby simply can't be gay. Eventually, they all must come to terms with this revelations and as it turns out, each brother also has been holding back family secrets. . .

See all Editorial Reviews

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Confessions and Sequelae, December 22, 2007

By	Grady Harp (Los Angeles, CA United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

OUTING RILEY may feel a bit self serving, as though Bobby Riley, the main character of the film, is sitting in a Confessional Booth revealing his secret, and in fact that is certainly the case as the film was conceived, lived, written, directed and stars Pete Jones as Bobby. This may account for some of the awkward sense of some of the dialog: it is difficult to be up front about an issue with a history as embedded as the theme of this film. But despite these minor flaws, this little film has a heart of gold and a cast of actors who bring it to life in a good way.

Bobby Riley (Pete Jones) is an Irish Catholic closeted gay man living in Chicago with his partner Andy (Michael McDonald). Bobby is being pressured by Andy and by his informed sister Maggie (Julie Pearl) to come out to his family - a good Irish Catholic family of four brothers, a sister, and a dying father (Bob Riley). His facade with his brothers is a mime of voyeurism of 'chicks' and a beer drinking butch life. Each family member has a secret: Maggie can't hold a relationship and is unable to keep secrets; Connor (Stoney Westmoreland) is addicted to internet porn; Jack (Dev Kennedy) is a priest who has problems with the conflicts the church places on his own beliefs; Luke (the always outstanding Nathan Fillion) is a pothead. Once Maggie decides she must out Bobby, the brothers are conflicted: homophobia raises its ugly head despite the bonds of close family ties. How the family comes to grips with Bobby's being gay, individually and as a family, is the crux of the tale.

This is a fine cast (especially Fillion and Pearl) and the story rolls along at a fine pace. At times it feels 'dishonest' but that is in the script, not the acting. This is not a major film, but it just may be a helpful one to families and friends who are curious about the lifestyle of someone who has surprised them with a similar secret! Grady Harp, December 07

15 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Nathan nathan nathan..., November 30, 2007

By	Jadecat (Lake Orion, MI United States) - See all my reviews

Being the avid Nathan Fillion fan I found this on TV and Tivo'd it, not knowing what it was about or what to expect. It was a little racier than I expected in the language department and I was only going to watch it for Nathan, but I got hooked and enjoyed the movie quite a bit. It surely isn't a wholesome and educational film for the children to see, but probably a pretty realistic view of what coming out is like in some families. Well acted all around, and Amazon needs to put Nathans name in a more prominent position for this one, he is the one star going somewhere in this and the only actor I recognized. He is some kind of big darn hero.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Forced Comedy Elements Trivialize a Coming-Out Tale in a Chicago Irish Catholic Family, February 3, 2008

By	Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA) - See all my reviews (TOP 100 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

I have to give credit to Pete Jones, who wrote, directed and starred in this low-budget 2004 indie, for having the temerity to make a coming-out film when he is apparently straight. And therein lies the rub since Jones doesn't really lend an informed perspective to his protagonist's trying situation. He plays Bobby Riley, a Chicago advertising account executive who happens to be gay and happily partnered. He also happens to come from a traditional Irish-Catholic family, a sister who knows he's gay and three brothers who don't. The movie is primarily about Bobby's struggle to come out to his brothers now that their father has just passed away and the time has come for their annual fishing trip together. While one can envision how Bobby's admission would lead to liberation and tolerance, Jones also superficially belabors Bobby's angst to the aggravating point of making me indifferent to his fate.

A lot of the problem I had with the movie is the predictable and often forced humor Jones employs to ingratiate the character to the viewer. In what strikes me as filmmaking laziness, he goes as far as breaking the fourth wall, speaking to the camera, and using freeze-frames to either provide thumbnail sketches of the principal characters or comment on the action. The set-up with the brothers is also pretty generic as they represent variations on the beer-guzzling stereotypes one would expect from a movie at least forty years older. Two are married - Luke is a pothead with twin daughters, and Connor is a John Sununu look-alike who surfs the Web for porn. Oldest brother Jack is a Catholic priest, which sets him up for the most challenging road toward acceptance. Once the key revelation occurs, the inevitable ramifications at least allow for the film's few honest moments, the most effective being Luke's angry voicemail message in response to what he sees as Bobby's betrayal.

In his acting debut, the cherubic Jones makes little impression as the bedeviled Bobby. Nathan Fillion, who would later play the smitten doctor in the late Adrienne Shelly's Waitress, fares the best among the actors portraying the brothers, and Michael McDonald of MADtv (not the singer) is surprisingly credible as Bobby's partner Andy. Julie Pearl is forced to play Bobby's sister Maggie as the nagging voice of conscience in order to facilitate the contrived plot conceit that proves disappointing toward the end. Jeff Garlin (Curb Your Enthusiasm, I Want Someone to Eat Cheese With) shows up in a cameo as a blowhard agency honcho trying to recruit Bobby believing him to be straight. I appreciate how Jones does not wrap everything up nicely at the end, although he sadly uses a stereotypical fantasy swimming number to get his point across. The much-delayed 2007 DVD features a commentary track from Jones, interviews and deleted scenes.