In & Out

Howard Brackett (Kline), an English teacher in a Midwestern town, gets the shock of his life when a protégé turned movie star (Dillon) unthinkingly 'outs' him before the whole world during the Oscar ceremony. Howard isn't even out to himself - in fact he's supposed to be marrying Emily (Cusack) at the weekend. So what if he's a virgin who loves to dance and adores Barbra Streisand movies? A mainstream comedy with a twist, this is surprisingly waspish about gay manners and sexual hypocrisy, especially as practised by Brackett himself. As long as the script by Paul Rudnick (inspired by Tom Hanks' announcement when he won an Academy Award for Philadelphia) is taking itself flippantly, the movie works well enough. Oz wants it both ways, though, and can't resist hammering home the message with a prolonged Spartacus-style climax quite as ludicrous as the Oscar winning film-within-the-film.