Get Real is a 1998 British romanticcomedy-drama film directed by Simon Shore, based on the play What's Wrong with Angry? by screenwriter Patrick Wilde. The plot centres the coming of age of a gay teen while growing up in rural Britain during the Cool Britannia era of the late 1990s. The film was shot and set in and around Basingstoke, England. Get Real has since become a cult classic among fans of queer cinema.
Plot
Steven Carter (Ben Silverstone) is a 16-year-old middle-class schoolboy who is intelligent and good-looking, but un-athletic and introverted. Bullied at school and misunderstood at home, his only confidante is his neighbour and best friend, Linda (Charlotte Brittain). Keeping his sexual orientation hidden from everyone else, he cruises in public toilets. He is surprised to find the school jock, John Dixon (Brad Gorton) also cruising, but John denies that he is gay.
At a school dance, Steven gains a friend after he comforts Jessica (Stacy Hart), following her argument with her boyfriend, Kevin (Tim Harris), who is also his bully. When Steven returns home, John follows him and confides about his own sexual orientation. They start a relationship.
Word around the school spreads about someone being gay, and John fears that Steven has been telling people. In order to maintain his status, John beats up Steven in front of his friends. Steven announces in front of the assembly that he is gay, and looks to John for support, who ignores him. John apologizes for beating him up and says he loves him, but as he is too afraid to come out, Steven breaks up with him, wishing him happiness.
Get Real was filmed in and around Basingstoke from the 17th of August 1997, before moving on to the Millennium Studios in Borehamwood on the 22nd of September. (The scenes that were shot in the studio were Steven's bedroom and the inside of the public toilet). The entire movie took six weeks to shoot.[2]
Reception
The film ranked number 34 on Entertainment Weekly's list of the 50 Best High School Movies.[3]
The film was well received by many critics, and subsequently nominated for eight awards, and won six.
In the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Paula Nechak praised the film for allowing the characters to be themselves rather than change to fit in, and praises the treatment of the 'jock' character, John, as being just as bound by the school popularity game as Steven.[4]
Roger Ebert commented, "Certainly this film has deeper values than the mainstream teenage comedies that retail aggressive materialism, soft-core sex and shallow ideas about "popularity."[5] Steven Holden from The New York Times wrote "The movie captures the excruciating paranoia of a situation in which there’s nowhere the lovers can be alone except in each other’s homes on the rare occasions their parents are out."[5]
In the Daily Record, Siobhan Synnot criticised the film as being like a "preachy episode of Grange Hill with cardboard cut-out characters" and also criticised the character, John, for being unbelievable, describing him as "simply a bland fantasy hunk. It's hard to see how this dim bulb is bright enough for Oxford, because all the smart lines go to his smart-alec boyfriend."[6]
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