Relax...It's Just Sex

When a subculture has been underground, at least in the movies, the filmmaker who brings it to light enjoys a ready-made advantage: Without trying all that hard, he can strip-mine the terrain and invent new screen types right and left. That's just what writer-director P.J. Castellaneta does in Relax...It's Just Sex, a savvy, slight, mostly gay comedy of manners.

Castellaneta's characters have a nifty way of surprising you by being exactly who they are, whether it's the affectionate but insecure butch lesbian (Lori Petty) who says she makes Janet Reno look feminine, the hipper-than-thou artist (T.C. Carson) who argues — more compellingly than you'd expect — that HIV doesn't cause AIDS, the fundamentalist gym-queen lovebirds (Chris Cleveland and Gibbs Toldsdorf), the loner hero (Mitchell Anderson) who reacts to being gay-bashed by displaying a rage he didn't know he had in him (his vengeance both appalls him and sparks him to life), or the daffy wannabe housewife (Jennifer Tilly) who takes solace in their mutual dissatisfaction. It's a bit of a sitcom stretch that this crazy quilt of characters would unfold into such a tidy community of pals, but as individuals they're irresistible company, and they make good on the title: a friendly admonition that the more you look at sexual preference, the less it explains. B

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