Were the World Mine

Were the World Mine is an ambitious movie made on a small budget that while rough around the edges and significantly less than subtle with it's overall message of tolerance and acceptance, it still manages to work on sheer charm alone. 

Timothy (played by Tanner Cohen) is a bullied and demoralized gay student at an all boys school just trying to get through each day until graduation. He frequently escapes the drudgery of high school into lavish, musical fantasy, frequently featuring his rugby stud crush Jonathon (played by Nathaniel David Becker). When his eccentric drama teacher, Mrs. Tebbit (played by Wendy Robie), casts Timothy as Puck in A Midsummer's Night Dream, things begin to change. As he is practicing his lines one day, he unlocks a recipe to create the play's "Love in Idleness" flower, a purple pansy that contains a powerful love potion. He decides to use it on his crush Jonathon the next day at school and it works perfectly. When Jonathon's teammates react negatively to their newfound affection, Timothy proceeds to use it on the rest of the team, with each affected member falling instantly in love with another boy, with Mrs. Tebbit in the background knowing all the well what is going on and secretly making sure the first person each homophobic boy sees is another boy. He even doses the equally intolerant Rugby coach for good measure, determined to make those that tormented him walk in his shoes for awhile.

The film has a lot of ambition in what it wants to do on a limited indie movie budget, yet manages to pull it off, although not without some nitpicks. The film itself is wonderfully shot and directed by cinematographer Kira Kelly and director Tom Gustafson, especially the musical numbers themselves (and damn if this movie certainly knows who it's target audience is and caters to them wonderfully). The two lead roles are wonderfully played by Tanner Cohen and Wendy Robie. Nathaniel David Becker likewise did well as Timothy's love interest. The music of the film is fantastic as it takes lines directly from Shakespeare's play to make up the lyrics to many of the songs, especially the title song. They're very well captured and the choreography matches it wonderfully.

However, the film is not perfect. The writing in the film is fairly straight-forward and even at times predictable. It follows the usual beats a story of this type would, with a gay twist. The main character, Timothy, learns the hard way that making someone love you unconditionally doesn't work as well as one would think. I thought it was a nice touch that the drama teacher was his unwitting partner in crime though, setting the events of the film into motion. The biggest flaw of the film was that is keeps pounding in it's message of acceptance and tolerance repeatedly throughout the film in the most obvious and almost obnoxious way rather than let it work it's way through the story in a more organic way. Furthermore, aside from our main character Timothy, the characters are terribly one dimensional. Some are developed a little bit, like Timothy's mom and his two friends, but others like the rugby team that bully Timothy are very one note characters that only exist to be homophobic caricatures and never feel like actual characters. Even Jonathan, Timothy's love interest, is rather underdeveloped. Aside from being cute and being nicer to him than the others, why exactly is Timothy so taken with him? Who knows, maybe that's enough but I wish there was more to it so the payoff would be richer at the end.

Still, for what it is it works for me besides it's flaws. The music is great and the story is intriguing and holds your attention. There is a certain undeniable charm to the film and what they managed to pull off on a small budget. Tanner Cohen is great in the lead role as is Wendy Robie. I just wish they had given the script a couple more passes and added a little more finesse to it. Right now it's just good, but it could've been great.