Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #9223 in DVD
• Released on: 2008-08-25
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Colour, DVD-Video, PAL, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 81 minutes

Video Description
Fearlessly raw and surprisingly tender The Houseboy delivers a wildly unconventional holiday tale. Aimless and barely in his twenties, disarmingly cute Ricky is content to play boy toy to a pair of hot thirty-something lovers. That is until he overhears them whisper about "a new toy for Christmas." Crushed and totally alone while his couple vacations, Ricky binges on internet hookups, random tricks, and hardcore drugs. Unable to kill the pain, Ricky contemplates the end. But a chance meeting with Blake, a sweetheart college kid with a thousand watt smile, makes Ricky wonder if there's something to live for after all.

Synopsis
Twenty-something Ricky shares an unconventional relationship with a thirty-something male couple, happy to be their boy-toy. When he overhears them discussing a possible boy-toy replacement, he's crushed and seeks comfort in casual sex and drugs. But when he meets college student Blake, Ricky finds something else to comfort him...

Customer Reviews

Potential not fully realised. Three and a half stars...
An unusual protagonist raises this film above the usual fare. Ricky is a young-ish guy who has been in a relationship with a wealthy, older gay couple for around a year. He's fairly content with this ménage-a-trois, and believes the couple love him. The film opens just before Christmas - the couple are off to visit relations, leaving Ricky behind to house-sit. The morning of their departure, he overhears one saying to the other that he wanted "a new toy" for Christmas, evidently referring to finding a replacement for Ricky.

Left alone for the holidays, depressed at the rejection, Ricky spirals downwards into a string of faceless one-night stands and explorers the use of hard drugs. He tells each trick that he plans to commit suicide on New Years' Eve. They mostly brush him off, interested only in a fleeting sexual encounter. The one man he does meet to whom he feels some genuine emotions is Blake, a college student, and all-round nice-guy. Ricky had been thrown out of home for telling his parents that he was gay; in contrast, Blake has an open, loving family environment - everything that Ricky most desires. But when Ricky presses for sex, Blake runs.

The faceless sexual encounters and drugs increase. New Years Eve is approaching...time for Ricky to put his plan into effect?

'The Houseboy' starts off somewhat bland, and the viewer can be forgiven for thinking that it will be just another low-budget fluff piece, the stereotypical 'gay movie'. In some ways it is - family conflict, lashings of nudity and sex - but Ricky's character develops impressively as the film proceeds, becoming increasingly disturbed as New Years' Eve draws closer. Not an easy role, but Nick May turns in a credible performance as the progressively dazed, scared and obsessive Ricky. This characterization, together with some surreal moments (snorting coke with Santa Claus) and a darker look at desire, make 'The Houseboy' into more than it first appears. I would actually give this film 3 and a half stars, in recognition of its potential.

Plenty of extras complete the DVD: deleted scenes, extra footage and on-set rehearsals, alongside the usual stills gallery and trailers.

Mistake
Don't be misled by the cover. The two guys disappear within five minutes of the opening credits leaving the boy in the center to his own devices and mainly to face imaginary monsters of his own making.
There is no conflict to speak of. The main hero apparently believes that his more adult friends (who left for Christmas to spend it with the family of one of them) intend to replace him with a younger specimen of the same breed and plans to commit a spectacular suicide so that his companions could know what harm they made.
Unfortunately, the whole story (hardly credible from the very beginning) is played rather badly so instead of a story we get a sequence of scenes in which our hero tries to drown his pain in mindless sex. At least there is sex but be forewarned - the adjective mindless was fully intended. And it applies to more than just sex.
In case you refused to listen to this (or any other) review, and then fell asleep or switched the video off halfway through the movie there is a happy ending. But by the time it comes, you will hardly care.

Dire
An appalling depressing sadly and badly directed and realised piece of drivel....get yer razor blades out if you buy this. Well intended? Can't even say that.

Avoid.