Customer Reviews

Man of the Year

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

While viewing this, you quickly realize that this should have been a "short" (10-15 minutes MAX!). Instead, you end up with a one dimensional joke that's stretched well over 80 minutes. There are some moments of brilliance and cleverness, but they are few and far between. It's more of a shameless Dirk Shafer promo piece than anything else, probably because his glory days are over and he has to get a real job. From the opening shot, you quickly realize that Dirk is getting old, like the rest of us, and that he looks NOTHING like he does on the cover of the DVD box or in the multitude of Playgirl pictures that are shown throughout the film. His choice of characterizations is quite irritating: the gay activists are shown as bitter queens whose lives won't be complete until they "out" him; and for being so in love with his own boyfriend, there are very few moments of genuine caring between them. As one reviewer mentioned, the AIDS sideplot is pathetic and really doesn't belong in this story. Must every gay-themed movie have someone dying of AIDS? Don't people die from car crashes anymore? Or gunshot wounds?

The DVD itself is sorely lacking. There are NO extras whatsoever except for a trailer of the film and a scene access feature (they call it "interactive menus"...ha!). No commentary, no interviews, not even subtitles for the hearing-impared! The picture is full-frame; no widescreen is available. This is obviously another rush job on the part of Fox-Lorber. Avoid it.

This documentary-like movie is about Playgirl centrefold Dirk Shafer and him being gay. Through interviews with poeple around him( frineds, parents, Playgirl editors...etc), we are shown about how he became the *Man of the Year* and how he got fired because of his sexual orientation.To be honest, I didn't expect too much from the film. I thought this was just some cheap low-budget film. But I was wrong! It turned out to be rather well made, very heart touching and funny at times. The only complaint I have is the DVD disc. The transfer is not all that good, and there is no extra materials. In conclusion, this IS a good film, but not a good DVD disc though.

This movie is dunderheaded, offensive, and hot in about equal measure. Shafer is obviously a dazzling physical specimen, and no doubt that accounts for a lot of the interest in this film, as well as the intrigue of his sham heterosexual heartthrob status. However, an intrinsic drawback of this mockumentary genre is that the joke wears thin pretty fast, and we soon feel compelled to groan at the same stale, straightfaced antics. And when Shafer makes the egregious error of using a friend's illness from AIDS (in a particularly lame performance by the actor in the movie here) to lend some poignancy to his slender theme, one may feel compelled to throw something at the screen. The obvious self-satisfaction of these laidback, self-consciously hip types, laughing down their noses at the rubes who bought Shafer's ruse, grates. Shafer seems unaware what a sick joke his feeble movie has become. His obvious self-absorption and lack of acting ability doesn't help things either. One performance does transcend the generally flaccid narcissism and cheap theatrics: the woman who portrays Shafer's mother has a scene where she gets to suggest some of the pain of a mother who realizes what her gay son has had to go through. For a moment, we are lifted out of the sleaze of vanity and lame satire and elevated to the poignance of true human suffering.

This mock-"documentary" is clever in that, I'm assuming, it does tell what could be a somewhat 'truthful' story overall. The problem with this video is that is doesn't know whether it should be funny or serious and this is definately a huge mistake for this kind of project/subject matter. I personally LOVE dark humor......but this aint it!!!
Best is the scene in which the mother talks about accepting herself as a fit and caring parent while she was dealing with the homophobic father of a dying AIDS patient on the phone.
The worst part of this whole video (and frankly I almost stopped watching quite a few times just due to this), are the "date scenes", in which Dirk is set up by Playgirl to go on a contest winning date with some supposedly hick gal (bad actress..bad!) who won it. The scenes never feel real and it's obvious that everyone is over-acting during the whole mess.
One thing I noticed is that while it's never a great movie and really not good either, overall Dirk isn't a horrible actor and I think he's actually pretty attractive, where as before I just thought he was a pretty boy. Also NYPD Blue fans will recognize the wonderful actor, Bill Bochtrup, in the role of AIDS patient and "discoverer" of Dirk the centerfold.
I was somewhat entertained or I wouldn't bother to write about it. BUT, buy at your own risk. Try to get it used if possible and save yourself a lot of money. Do Not buy it if you think it's a sex film or you're hoping for nudity all over the place, there's no full frontal nudity at all....sorry. Peace Out.

This is the type of video that makes you wish you could have your precious time back.

It is so horrible, boring, uninteresting. Could the people actually involved in it sit through it?

I strongly advise everyone out there to do something better with their time!

Uneven mockumentary from Dirk Shafer that can never quite decide what it wants to be. It goes on way too long (although it clocks in at less than an hour and a half) and is very repetitive. Worst of all it makes the mistake of veering away from comedy in the last half hour or so into the realm of pathos and preachiness, as it tackles issues like outing, homophobia and AIDS. Preachiness is bad enough in a drama, but fatal in a comedy.

Still there funny parts and funny characters, especially Lady La Flame (Rhonda Dotson), exotic dancer and Dirk's self-professed number one fan. Shafer is sweet and appealing as he struggles to extricate himself from the quagmire of his own making.

Not a bad movie, but not a terribly good one either.

A tasteless and offensive film that ultimately proves to be a cynical joke played by writer-director-star Dirk Shafer against his audience. Shafer was the 1992 "Playgirl" Man of the Year centerfold who (supposedly) represented the ultimate object of desirability for the magazine's (supposedly) heterosexual readership, but is in reality a gay man. Having played the role of a straight man in life, Shafer went on to make this film, a fictional documentary about his secret life during the year of his "reign". He's a gay man who pretended to be a straight man who is pretending to unmask himself as a gay man ... get it? Ha, ha. Ha.

Very (yawn) funny, except that during the course of the film Shafer keeps touching on some very unfunny subjects: a best friend dying of AIDS; homophobia; gay self-hatred; celebrity stalking; etc. The big punch line comes at the end of the movie when Shafer confides that his overall objective in making the movie was not to reveal himself, but merely "to direct"; i.e., to con the viewer into paying to see yet another false presentation of himself. What an ego! The film might have had some redeeming quality if only Shafer had been graceful enough to laugh at himself, but he doesn't. Trust me, there's less to him than meets the eye. Not even worth a look for Bill Bochtrup ("NYPD Blue") as the friend dying of AIDS or Mindy Sterling (the Austin Powers movies) in a brief bit as fictional talk show host Cindee.

The DVD includes the theatrical trailer which is presented in widescreen. The film itself is not presented in widescreen. Not that you should care one way or the other.

The premise of this movie looked mildly interesting, but in fact what could have been a decent film was botched by it's attempts to bring a touch of seriousness to an otherwise humorous "mockumentary". I have seen well done films of this type, and this was anything but. The more the characters in this film portray the protagonist as a "likeable, non-egotistical" person the less the viewer believes he is, especially in light of the fact that Dirk Shafer wrote and directed this film. The movie leaves the viewer confused, bored and uninterested. It was not worth my attention, and is not even entertaining as a bad movie.