Review of Breakfast With Scot at the Toronto Film Festival

We noted last week that gay sports dramedy Breakfast With Scot screened over the weekend at the Toronto Film Festival, and we are lucky enough to have a reader who attended the screening and offered to share his thoughts on the film.

(Below provided by JBE. Thanks!)

Hi AfterElton.com friends and readers, this is your friendly gay Canadian, JBE from downtown Toronto. My partner and I have just returned from the world premiere of the Canadian film Breakfast With Scot. The AfterElton.com blog did an excellent job of summarizing the basic plot and characters, so I will stick to giving you my impressions of the movie.

Overall I found it heart-warming, funny and at times bittersweet (I was a bit wet eyed near the end). I especially liked the contrast between 12-year old Scot who is "very gay" in the stereotypical fashion (he sings Christmas carols in October to great effect), and the "straight-acting" gay couple Eric (a former Maple Leaf hockey player and tough guy played by Tom Cavanagh) and his partner Sam (played by the very sexy Ben Shenkman).

The first part of the movie is very funny as Scot (acted very well by the doe-eyed Noah Barrett) enters Sam and Eric's life just being himself which of course causes the very closeted Eric no end of grief! Eric, using the pretense of protecting Scot from bullying at school (you strongly suspect the real reason is to make sure the lock on the closet door doesn't break) trys to "butch" Scot up (if you saw Scot you would realize he was toiling in very stoney soil) by hiding his jewelry, encouraging him to play hockey (he is a very good figure-skater) and teaching him to fight. At this point the movie takes a more serious turn as Scot tries to live up to Eric's expectations.

I don't want to give the ending away but just lets say that Eric the closeted gay guy does more growing up than Scot by the time the 95 minutes are up.

Overall I was pleased with the way the characters were portrayed. Some people may object to using such a stereotypical character as Scot. I disagree because you had the feeling watching the movie that Scot was probably the most "real" character in the whole movie. He was just being himself and it was everyone else that really needed to change. The gay couple were also very believable; it was not a stretch to imagine that a closeted gay hockey player would react the way Eric did (e.g. wearing sunglasses in public when he was with Scot).

I don't think the film will go down in history as great art but it may go down at least in the GLBT community as important art. It is difficult to exaggerate the importance of all the positive messages this movie sends out. The National Hockey League endorsed the making of the movie (to the chagrin of the Christian Fundamentalists), the Toronto Maple Leafs allowed themselves to be associated as Eric's ex-team (for my US friends the Leafs are an iconic franchise equivalent to baseball's Red Sox). The hockey establishment is basically saying that homophobia is wrong and it is possible to be a gay couple and be a positive role model (interestingly the straight guardian of Scot, Sam's brother, is totally irresponsible and nobody's role model). The hockey establishment is also hinting that it knows there are players that are gay and that it is okay with it. Could this movie be the catalyst for former and current pro hockey players to come out of the closet? I think it could be.

JBE, Proud Gay Canadian and Hockey Fanatic