Eleven Men Out

Wow! That was disappointing.
This is a slick film coming from an interesting place, Iceland, filled with sorta cute people (of both genders) and some interesting family dynamics, and the main plot circles around a sports star. This film had lots of potential.

In a nutshell, the central figure, an Icelandic soccer ("football") star, Ottar, decides to come out as gay in order to be on the "front page" of a magazine. This leads to problems, as the Icelandic people are evidently quite homophobic, and Ottar is sent packing, his family is enraged/horrified, his son ostracized, and his wife/girlfriend/son's mother is driven further into her liquor-induced semi-coma.

Fortunately, there is another soccer team which is more accepting, and Ottar decides to give it a try on a new team, essentially forming a team of gay and gay-friendly men who become quite successful, mostly because nobody else will play them.

This film fails, mostly, because of a flaw in the story. You never get the...

Strangely mean-spirited & dull
This is not a "feisty comedy" a "hilarious comedy" or a comedy at all. It's probably not a film of any sort. It's just filmstock.

So let's not delude ourselves -- as a movie that typifies a sub-genre of gay cinema, a combination of 'coming-out' and 'sport,' "Eleven Men Out" offers nothing distinctive or titillating or rewarding for its target audience, presumably gay males.

If this movie were simply a rehash of the cliches that have come to dominate much of imported gay European cinema, the movie might have been tolerable. Some sweaty guys, some jokes about balls, some family acceptance scenes, some investigative sex, a club scene, a break-up, etc. But "Eleven Men Out" fails to capture even one or two of these marketable tropes. What the film does have are strangely mean-spirited and dull episodes, perhaps edited together, chronicling a vaguely handsome soccer-player's interactions with strangely mean-spirited and dull family members, lovers, fellow players. This...

Okay
This is an identical plot to the German movie Guys and Balls but their like stops there. As one is fun, energetic, spontaneous, and likable, the other is not. They are both made by the same production company.

Eleven Men Out is a very depressing, serious, and awkward movie where the acting is barely passable. And I did not like that the main character's son gets caught in the middle of his father coming out and his mother being a slut and a drunk.

This is an Icelandic movie. Basically the plot is based on a famous local football player playing for the first and most popular team in Iceland. He announces in the beginning of the movie that he is gay just to get a story and a picture in the local magazine. Then he joins a third rate all gay team.

The rest of the movie is the tribulations of him adjusting to his new life and team. His father is a psychiatrist and a member of the board of his former team. At first his former team chastises him but toward...

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