Race You to the Bottom (2005)

This review will contain spoilers in general terms but if you do not want to know I give the 2 stars purely for the performance of Amber Benson who somehow manages to make her deeply unsympathetic character watchable.However, that aside the movie is truly depressing. In essence we have two thoroughly unlikable, hedonistic people who are so shallow and self destructive that they are having an affair which given how self-centred they are can't possibly go anywhere meanwhile hurting their boyfriends who for some reason like them. I could almost accept this if the characters learned something from the experience, but the ending seems to hint at the real possibility that they've learned nothing. So we have a very long, depressing 70+ minutes with nothing to show for it. Long travel, no distance.The acting, Miss Benson aside, is pretty bad. Cole Williams simply lacks any charisma as the leading man and none of the support cast come across with anything to raise above woeful in the performance.But the onus of this sad project's failure lies fairly and squarely on the head and shoulders of its writer/director. What is he trying to say about relationships and people in this film? Nothing positive at all, in fact I'd almost go as far as saying the director seems to have a real disdain for people and relationships. Worse yet the film certainly re-enforced a lot of the insecurities and distrust that i have about relationships so it doesn't even manage to entertain. it merely sits in what feels like a cesspool of loathing.The direction is competent to be fair but nothing above TV show, and low budget TV show at that.I'm a big fan of Miss Benson's, and certainly think she is good in this, but the film is thoroughly depressing, lacking either sympathetic characters or any real moral compass or purpose other than to depress people. Unless you feel like watching a film to slit your wrists to, I'd avoid this film like the proverbial plague.

A reviewer for a well respected industry paper said this movie had modest aspirations in giving it a brief, although not negative review. Unfortunately, those aspirations apparently had nothing to do with fleshed out or likable characters that the audience could either empathize with or have any interest in. The two leads are genuinely unlikeable, with few redeeming attributes to their credit. "We'll always have Paris" is what passes for wit and charm but it's kind of like your relatives bring five day old leftovers for the third day in a row because you've overstayed your welcome. The movie is technically sufficiently proficient but this is a horrible script that should never have seen the light of day on film, not even as a school video project. There is nothing this movie tells anyone about being bisexual, gay, male and female bonding, friendship, or anything else (except possibly as a brief travelogue on Napa, something Sideways (albeit about Santa Barbara) or any Food Network show on wine does with far more superiority and without making you sit through all this dross. It goes on over long but even at that, there is no "there" there to have justified making this a short of any length. This is not a movie I could even recommend to borrow for free from your local library or a friend. Hopefully, you don't have the kind of friends who would own this DVD and trust me, even a children's book for the pre-school set would be superior material for borrowing from the library system that this.

I never believed for a minute that Cole Williams' character was a true bisexual and therein lies the flaw in RACE YOU TO THE BOTTOM. He's an arrogant, self-centered writer (whose talent is also something of a line of BS), who is acting like a spoiled baby and it is hard to muster up any sympathy for him or any of the other characters in this road-to-nowhere film. The DVD commentary tries to explain away their behavior by emphasizing that that the characters are in their 20's and this is their 'time' to be self-centered and let ego rule. Maybe if the film-maker took a solid stance on how HE feels about them, we'd care too. But he didn't and we don't so race to the credits and get it over with.

I rented this movie from Netflix and saw the running time 1:13...too short to a feature and too long to be a featurette. After fifteen minutes, I was already looking at my watch. Seldom have I seen so many misfit romances and affairs, it almost became laughable. The gay lead desiring sex from a hag who preferred a Lesbian in college. He was too effeminate to believe he desired her for sex. SPOILER: The people who got hurt were their two boyfriends back home...and her boyfriend preferred sex from our male lead. I kept wishing they would ALL die and end this piece of tripe halfway through. I watched until the end hoping there might be some redeemable value...but the ending only was worse...especially the tag-line at the end. The only conclusion I drew from this film was that the director must hate gay people to portray them in such a negative dysfunctional manner. Had I paid full price for admission, I would've asked my money back. Seventy-three minutes is too short for any film. The producer should have paid the audience nine bucks to sit through it!