Humpday (2009) - A Guest Review by Adrian Brain

An American comedy bromance would normally have me running a mile, but this was on MUBI (which simply doesn’t have bad films) and so I was persuaded to watch it - and I’m quite glad I did. Would a man have sex with his best male friend? Of course not, but that's the premise of the movie and it sells you the idea so well that you forget the daftness of it.

Ben is married to Anna and we meet them trying to conceive their first baby. Ben is climbing up the corporate pole and they share certain life objectives as they slip into a typical American family lifestyle. There is a knock at the door in the middle of the night and in bounds Andy, Ben’s best school and college buddy who has been away for 10 years on an adventure of self-discovery in South America.

Anna soon finds husband Ben is behaving very differently around Andy, but she also finds him somewhat invigorated by the return of his old friend. At a party, in a drunken moment they decide that Andy and Ben should film a porno for an art project, with the tape being destroyed after the screening. The next day, both men reconsider, but in their determination to out-liberal each other, end up cementing the deal. The remainder of the film takes us up to the nominated 'humpday' and the evolution of the relationships between the three characters via lots of subtle observational humour.

What could have been annoyingly dumb is actually handled very smartly, in large part down to the direction and naturalistic performances of the cast. From the credits, it looks like the 3 main cast members were all dialog consultants - and it shows - every conversation feels real. I didn’t recognise any of the cast but they are uniformly relatable. They are completely rounded characters and you’d feel happy to have any of them as your friends.

The film is all about relationships of course and how some evolve with time and others get stuck at a certain fixed point. There is also a contrast drawn between men and women’s attitude to the intersection of friendship and sex.

I found the last scene, the 'will they or won’t they?' hump day, intriguing. I was cringing at the thought that these best mates might possibly destroy their friendship forever, but the wife was cheering them on - shouting “Get on with it! What’s your problem?”. That’s how smart the storytelling is, it exemplifies the observations the film has made.

Not for everyone, but I really enjoyed this. A mature film dealing with adult themes in a non-gratuitous, non-salacious manner which is simply refreshing to see.