‘G.B.F.’ Is The Best Movie About Coming Out

Today is National Coming Out Day, an awareness-raising holiday that celebrates the LGBTQ community and its allies. While it’s not necessarily meant to be the one day for queer people to come out publicly, the day is a good reminder of the difficulty and awkwardness of revealing a personal side of your life that non-queer people take for granted. Because it’s something that the majority of the population doesn’t experience, it’s no surprise that there aren’t many great movies about coming out.

I’ve previously written about In & Out, which made an attempt at nailing coming out back in 1997 (when “coming out” was a buzzword). These days, we’re told that coming out is no big deal — although, you know, we still make a big deal about any celebrity who makes a statement about his or her sexuality. What many of us forget is what it was like to reveal something so personal, especially when we have so few examples to use as role models.

That’s why G.B.F., a film directed by Darren Stein and written by George Northy, is such an important movie. It’s a teen comedy, so it has all of the trappings of the genre — the broad, satirical strokes, the convenient “It Gets Better” narrative, etc. But in a time when queer identity politics is such a hot-button topic thanks to the splintering of the LGBTQ umbrella, G.B.F. is a surprising success because it makes great effort to be unapologetically satirical while still retaining a lot of heart and understanding.

The film follows Tanner (Michael J. Willett) and Brent (Paul Iacono), two most-closeted teenagers who are pretty open about being gay to their best friends, but not to their families or the rest of their school. When Tanner is unwillingly outed at school, the three most popular girls — the hot cheerleader, the drama queen, a ditzy Mormon — all vie for his friendship, believing that a G.B.F. (Gay Best Friend) is the hottest accessory that make each a more competitive Prom Queen contestant.

When Tanner becomes more popular for being the only gay guy at school, it creates tension between him and Brent, who had planned on coming out himself as a ploy to ensure his own popularity. Complicating their friendship is Tanner’s revelation to Brent’s mother that her son is gay, truly nailing down the politics of coming out: it’s something you have to do yourself, not something that can be done for you (another failing of the previously mentioned In & Out).

While G.B.F. plays with gay stereotypes, it also subverts them. Tanner is a quiet kid, a direct contrast to the more fashion-focused and fabulous Brent, and when he is outed by a straight girl desperate to find a gay kid so she can start a gay-straight alliance, he’s immediately seen as a tolerable — if slightly disappointing — gay gay. One of G.B.F.‘s greatest achievements is depicting the way in which straight people view the LGBTQ community, assuming that all us share the same desires and struggles; the film pokes fun at the straight gaze, the notion that gay men especially must fulfill the expectations of our straight allies.

Most importantly, G.B.F. hilariously depicts the indignities of adolescence, the pains that aren’t limited to certain types of people. Being a teenager, frankly, sucks for everybody, and the movie takes its characters seriously while still maintaining a playful tone. Additionally, the film creates a safe space for gay kids while not ignoring the fact that they exist in a world alongside those who feel threatened by them. But while there a lesson of tolerance that fits into the film in which the conservative, homophobic students realize that it’s OK to be gay, G.B.F. doesn’t present its gay protagonists as victims. In fact, Tanner and Brent’s parents are overwhelmingly supportive. Brent’s mother (played with comic perfection by Megan Mullally) especially tries her best to drop hints at her comfort and ease with her son to an extreme extent. While her antics are, of course, ridiculous, at the heart of her character is a person who loves and respects her son and wants him to feel safe and loved. That we don’t have to learn these lessons through images of anger, violence, and discrimination is vital and refreshing.

G.B.F. is an endearing and sweet coming-of-age comedy, as good a teen movie as the classics we know and love. But more importantly, it comes from a valuable, different perspective, and achieves what most coming-out movies can’t accomplish: it’s entertaining and very funny, and has broad appeal that extends beyond the LGBTQ community.

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Photos: Vertical Entertainment / Everett Collection