`Kiss Me, Guido' Sits On The Gay Crossover Fence

Movie review XX 1/2 "Kiss Me, Guido," with Nick Scotti, Anthony Barrile, Anthony DeSando, Craig Chester, Molly Price. Written and directed by Tony Vitale. Egyptian. 86 minutes. "R" - Restricted because of profanity and one sex scene.

Crossover movies with gay themes have a lot to contend with. To bridge from their genre ghettos to bigger audiences, it seems that they must: a) star Tom Hanks ("Philadelphia," say); b) draw their gay heroes as somehow "reassuringly white and middle-class" (i.e., star Tom Hanks); or c) flirt with outrageous cliches in the hope of exploding them (e.g., "La Cage Aux Folles," "Priscilla, Queen of the Desert").

Right on the crossover fence, Tony Vitale's "Kiss Me, Guido," skitters into category d): a movie in which stock types from both sides of the sexual fence rub each other the wrong way until - well, something's got to give.

Is it any surprise, then, that Vitale's debut emerges with a split personality? His gay characters, not so acutely drawn, feel wooden. His Italian Americans, who talk with their hands and adjust themselves in public, evince a low-key charm and give the film much of the hit-and-miss pleasure that it has.

We meet "Guido" - a.k.a. Frankie - first. Hunky and oblivious, Frankie seems to understand that he is a low-budget John Travolta from "Saturday Night Fever." Or a De Niro from "Raging Bull." Or a Stallone from "Rambo." Whatever.

At the Bronx pizzeria where he works, Frankie serves up slices to his friends with lukewarm impressions of the actors he identifies as his outer borough role models. Frankie dreams of marrying his girlfriend and becoming an actor across the bridge in New York, but it takes the shock of walking in on his girlfriend with his brother (Anthony DeSando as a neck-cracking grifter, in the film's most consistently amusing performance) to prod Frankie to action.

He spots a Village Voice ad for a "GWM" roommate. A quick phone call confirms Frankie's understanding: GWM, he tells a friend, means "Guy Wid Money."

As it turns out, and as befits Vitale's farcical script, a guy with money is just what Warren (Anthony Barrile) is looking for: Out of work since his cult movie hit, "Mafia Kick Boxer II," Warren owes rent to his aerobaholic, sex-starved landlady (Molly Price), and when Frankie shows up to look at the place, he's the answer to Warren's problems.

Not for a while, though. Vitale must first run his roomies through several frosty accords, not a few of them falling flat as the aspiring actor helps the experienced one memorize lines (for a hilariously bad, gay-themed play called "Fire in the Hole"). But here and there you get scenes like the one where Frankie and Warren watch "The Sound of Music": "Who's in dat?" asks Frankie. "Julie Andrews." "She do that before `Pretty Woman'?"

As cliches go, Frankie is a full-blooded one, and Nick Scotti gives him an appealingly dumb exuberance. Barrile is fine, but he's here to play the straight man, so to speak - which is, in a way, Vitale's sneakily interesting point. When Frankie gets lured into Warren's play finally, we can see in his reluctance to "play" gay how zestfully in the rest of his life he "plays" straight.