Our Front Room Endorses

Right it’s about time we started marking out parts of the modern media deluge that is the very lifeblood of us here in Our Front Room (sounds like a metaphor but seriously I might enter a coma if a don’t watch at least one film a week - though the need to watch fifty hours worth of The X files in the next 30 days may make that hard this month, but I figure it should be to me as methadone is to addicts and the Squid would shrivel up and rot if not for the world wide web, strong chance the tentacly one be near the front of the line when they work out how to jack straight into your brain. Well if the front of the line is too far away, ‘cos, you know there’ sitting to be done (wow, long, long bracketed sentence there!)) as to ensure that those of you out there in the world can avoid the drivel for the shiny, shiny goodness.

Thus for the inaugural pointing and waving we have ‘Swingers’. For the easy description think Sex & The City but two years earlier, with guys and not nearly as smug as the Horse faced one’s gal pals. Essentially the story of struggling actor Mike Peters and his attempt to re-join the social scene after a break-up come break-down.

We join Mike and his buddies (most notable Vince Vaughn’s Trent Walker) as they hit the party (and girl) trail in .L.A, a town or raging absurdity if there ever was one plus a detour to Vegas. This is certainly not one for those who have to leave the room when the social embarrassment becomes too much for them, one sequence of Mike crumbling apart like the plot of Russel T Davis Dr Who script as he calls back a potential date is excruciatingly and all to believable. And all too familiar.

What we have here is a cultural document on what it is to be a guy from the bizarre patterns of male bonding to the insecurities that tear at us (though of course we would never say so, ‘cos, you know we are all too manly for that kind of behavior. It’s tremendously quotable and saves perhaps the most familiar social bear trap until it’s final moments; the excitement of the perceived attraction followed by the rush of embarrassing realization (and the accompanying wish to disappear right then and there) that they were never looking at you at all.

Go, on give it the ‘ol Rainman sweep. Vegas, baby, Vegas.