Humpday

Writer/director Lynn Shelton's lo-fidelity indie effort is a disarmingly goofy yet dramatic yarn built around two straight Generation Z buddies who incite the other to have sex together in the interest of entering a local Seattle amateur porn video contest called "Humpday." Mark Duplass plays Ben, a working class guy with a loving domestic wife named Anna (played by Alycia Delmore). Ben's and Anna's cozy home life is disrupted when Ben's bohemian man/boy friend-from-his-past Andrew (played by Joshua Leonard) shows up unannounced at the couple's doorstep in the middle of the night. The pals' friendship of oneupsmanship takes a dodgy turn at a party of young metrosexual hipsters when the duo hatch the idea of making a sex video that is "beyond gay," wherein they will film themselves preparing to, and having sex, in a hotel room. The guys never bother to hash out which one will be doing the poking, and the film's broiling subtext of 21st century American zeitgeist of stupidity via mumblecore's can't-get-started value system comes to a head with a surprising amount of humor and honesty. Alycia Delmore gives a nuanced performance as Anna, but it's the dumb-as-stumps performances from Duplass and Leonard that make "Humpday" a movie that you can laugh at as much as you laugh with it.
Seashel Pictures R. 94 mins. (B-) (Three Stars)