Boys on the Side (1995)

(In French, On Cable TV, July 2022) More than anything else, I’m struck at how Boys on the Side can feel equally timeless, progressive and stuck in the mid-1990s at the same time. Some of its structural issues irk me: what begins as a grand transcontinental road trip movie ends up petering out midway through as the action stops in Arizona and eventually doubles back east to tie up loose ends. But maybe there was no other way to play out the issues exposed during the film’s first half, and Boys on the Side certainly has a grab bag of social issues to sort through. Of the three women making up the lead roles of the film (played by Mary-Louise Parker, Whoopi Goldberg and Drew Barrymore), one is HIV-positive; another is a lesbian; a third is running away from an abusive boyfriend. You can measure some social progress in assessing how those plotlines have aged: While Boys on the Side starts with the absolute best of intentions for a mid-1990s film, society has shifted significantly in the meantime. HIV isn’t the death sentence it once was, and the weepy treatment of its sick character (Parker) now feels anachronistic. Homosexuality is far more accepted as well, making even the film’s sympathetic treatment of its outspoken lesbian (Goldberg) sounds atonal and sometime patronizing. (Not to mention not actually consummating what’s supposed to be the film’s central romance.)  Unfortunately, there’s still plenty of life left for the archetype of the woman with a bad boyfriend (Barrymore), so there’s that. Trying to carve itself a place as an activist women’s picture in the wake of Thelma and Louise (which gets a shout-out), Boys on the Side remain a bit off—and you can take a look at the all-male topline crew to start to understand why. Still, the film does have its moments. The first road-movie half is definitely more fun than the second, and an impossibly young Matthew McConaughey shows up as a policeman with lawful-neutral notions of justice that create plenty of problems with his new girlfriend. There’s a reassuring patina of slick 1990s filmmaking to it all, and Goldberg is easily the most interesting performer here. As a result, Boys on the Side is perhaps more fascinating to watch now, with the parallax view of unfolding social history, than it must have been at release.