Were the World Mine

"Were the World Mine"
Tom Gustafson, 2008

The hero of “Were the World Mine,” a new film that is based off of Shakespeare's “A Midsummer Night's Dream,” is a gay teenager named Timothy (Tanner Cohen), who attends a private, all-boys high school. Timothy has already come out to his mother, who, as a single parent struggling to find work, views his sexuality as yet another burden that she must carry. In P.E., he's often teased, and occasionally beat, by other students, with the encouragement of their pugnacious and homophobic coach (Christian Stolte). Timothy escapes from his travails by fantasizing about the hot guys in his class singing to him, shirtless, and in near-perfect synchronization, as if performing in a play.

Coincidentally, Timothy has a class with an affable English teacher named Ms. Tebbit (Wendy Robie) who encourages him to audition for the school's rendition of “A Midsummer Night's Dream.” Timothy, as it turns out, is a natural actor with a lovely voice. He's an untapped talent, and is given the leading role as the fairy (har har), but he has another unusual gift – he can make the love potion in Shakespeare's play work in real life. He gives nearly everyone in the town a whiff of the potion, which makes the person – or victim? - fall madly in love with the first person they lay eyes on.

Timothy, by way of his drug, receives the affections of the really cute captain of the rugby team, while the rest of the town's “moral” centered-ness disintegrates. It's surprising that given the setup, the profusion of hot guys, and the above-average visuals, “Were the World Mine” is so dull. Every gay person can relate to Timothy's crush on the high school jock, and how such people turn out to be incredibly hetero-normative. It's a fantasy that I thought I'd like to see play out on screen, but the film is really dealing with obsessions, not with love as it so claims.

A straight friend accidentally receives a dose of the love potion, and promptly grows enamored of Timothy; he's willing to fight to the death with the rugby team's captain for Timothy's favor. “Were the World Mine” feels deceiving because it puts such unreasonable obsessions on the same level as Timothy's real life crushes. This is not so much a film about a gay teen's fantasy, though this is what the film is really trying to be about, as it is a semi-cautionary tale about how unhealthy it is to obsess about other people. I would be content with an exploration of either aspect, but given the rather sloppy way in which the film is conceived, neither part plays out to a satisfactory extent.

At the end, after Timothy has “had his fun,” he casts a spell on everyone in town, returning them to their normal, pre-obsessive states. But everyone has, to some degree, had their eyes opened about love, acceptance – or something. It's not entirely clear what the lesson is, but it isn't all that important anyway. What matters most is the revelation that the rugby captain has really been in love with Timothy all along, and that it took the spell, the lifting of social misgivings about homosexuality, for him to finally accept that. So, our hero becomes a part of the gay fantasy incarnate. But it remains nothing more than a fantasy. Like waking from a dream, the contrivance of it all makes us feel not joy at Timothy's victory, but disappointment at its very flimsiness.

Rating: 5

First Viewed: 11/25/08, in 35 mm projection - IMDb