Pity poor Shane Black. He goes away and the movies change. He comes back and makes a solid piece of Shane Black entertainment: a buddy movie (sort of) and it feels wildly out of date. Very entertaining mind you. Just a bit like Overboard in the 80’s: a screwball comedy when they no longer made them. Shane has tried to update it, one of the characters is gay after all : how modern. But his metatextual arguments and quick repartee still seems firmly rooted in the 1980’s, along with his attitudes.
Val Kilmer’s character Gay Perry is gay mainly because
a) he is called Gay
b) that’s about it. Really.
Robert Downey Jr’s character is not openly homophobic, he just does not like being kissed and believes that gay men can fire bullets out of his penis. Hello – wrong attitude.
A similar thing happens when Black tries to be sensitive towards the female character. Downey berates Michelle Monaghan’s character’s willingness to have meaningless sex, suggesting she is not just a sex object. And yet her key scene in the film has her running around in black patent leather boots, fishnets and a skimpy santa outfit. GO EMPOWERMENT!
I think Bradshaw said it reminded him of a Road To movie, and indeed the three leads complete the chemistry rather than it being a plain buddy movie. In the Road movies though the Bob Hope character was the sexually unthreatening one, here it is Fatso Kilmer. Why. Because he is Gay remember. Its his name.