With all of the buff men in tights storming movie theatres this summer (think X-Men: The Last Stand and Superman Returns), hetero-mantic comedy The Break-Up hardly seems like the most compelling date movie for gay men. Plus, foreknowledge that Vince Vaughn, stereotypical Every-lout, is starring may immediately lower expectations.

After all, his specialty is playing those loud, obnoxious, beer-swilling straight guys who don't typically scream "gay-friendly." Last year's hugely successful The Wedding Crashers didn't help that reputation, particularly as it included a creepy gay guy (played by Keir O'Donnell, also in The Break Up) who became obsessed with Vaughn's womanizing Crasher.

But The Break-Up is a surprisingly thoughtful, melancholy little film that, for the most part, doesn't make the same tired mistakes when it comes to including not one but...well, one and a half gay sidekicks.
 
Per the norm, gays aren't the focus of this film. It centers on the splitting up of straight couple Gary (Vaughn) and Brooke (Jennifer Aniston). But in their supporting roles, John Michael Higgins (Best in Show) as Brooke's flamboyant brother Richard and Justin Long (Herbie Fully Loaded) as her eccentric assistant Christopher don't play their characters as disposable gay stereotypes. And while both are ridiculous in the extreme, they're no more ridiculous than the straight friends and family bearing witness to Brooke and Gary's nasty split.
 
We first meet Richard when Gary and Brooke's families converge at the couple's condo for dinner. Brooke and Gary have been fighting but try to put on a collective happy face as their families become acquainted. Gary and his brothers Lupus (Cole Hauser) and Dennis (a subdued Vincent D'Onofrio) own a tour guide business together, and come from hearty working-class Polish-American stock. Brooke's family is clearly the more sophisticated of the two, with her mother, (Ann Margaret!) father, and brother mastering the sort of civilized dinner conversation that garners mostly eye-rolls from Gary.
 
Part of that conversation is a harmless knock-knock joke told by Brooke's father. Macho brother Lupus responds with a joke of his own, which just happens to be a gay joke. Brooke's eyes fill with panic, and Richard screws up his face in confused distaste. The subject is quickly changed to that of Gary's goals for his tour guide business. Richard expresses admiration for Gary's enthusiasm about his work, then launches into a dramatic story about his own driving passion, his all-male a cappella group, The Tone Rangers.
 
The looks exchanged by everyone else at the table as Richard waxes poetic about the joys of song are clearly meant to imply that they are in on some joke that he is not. The joke being that Richard is a big, dramatic queen whose flights of fancy must be indulged. Richard never once states, "And I love The Tone Rangers because I'm a big homo," but his artistic nature and effeminate gestures are standard hetero-cultural codes for "gay."
 
Richard soon leaps to his feet and showcases his vocal prowess by singing 80's hit "Owner of a Lonely Heart" directly into Gary's face. Higgins is hilarious as usual, with his over-the-top deadpan depiction of a man thoroughly in touch with his inner diva. It's the same unhinged bravado that stole Best in Show right out from under its better-known comedic stars.

The big difference is that in The Break-Up, Higgins' Richard is in no way out--to anyone else and maybe not even himself--as a gay man.
 
Richard's flashy showmanship is something that Gary will later throw in Brooke's face when each makes digs at the other's family. Richard, Gary tells her, is gay but he just doesn't know it. Brooke defends her brother as straight, but Gary tells her, "I'm not saying he won't get married and have kids some day. I'm just saying that one day his wife will come home and find him with some guy...wearing leather masks and clubbing the crap out of each other to Yanni's greatest hits!"

The fact that this comment comes from Gary, and not Brooke or some other more reliable (i.e. likeable, sympathetic) character is significant. Gary may inexplicably equate being gay with sadomasochism and new age music, but he's also the thoughtless clod who can't hold on to smart, beautiful and ambitious Brooke.

Gary is depicted as a funny but essentially useless train wreck of a guy, and his attitude toward Richard is just another indicator of his hopeless immaturity.

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