Cheap 200 American (DVD) (Richard LeMay) Price

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Customer Reviews of 200 American

What would you pay for a life-changing night?
This is an adorable movie. It's low-budget and the acting is not <
>spectacular, but nevertheless, it's a cute story with sexy characters and an impressive, unique plot. <
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>Conrad is a successful, attractive man recently heart-broken. Venturing into the unknown, he hires a sex worker for the night. As it turns out, his hired man, Ian, is quite the catch -- a young, charming, sexy Australian trying to save money to stay in the country. Soon enough, Ian is in Conrad's life every day, though not as you may think. <
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>As Ian moves into Conrad's social life, everyone's issues come to the surface. Love stories unfold and redevelop, problems at home collide with life at work, the truth behind Ian's need to do sex work comes out, and everyone is in for a wake-up call about life and what they need. <
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>Basically, it's genuine, it's cute and charming, and it deals with real-life problems, most of which just happen to be gay, a definite plus in my book. So give its budget a break and sit back and enjoy a film well-worth seeing. <
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Not bad, but...
The plot is promising while the dialogue stumbles. The acting, with the exception of the understated but well-executed performance by Sean Matic, is strained but not not entirely unpalatable. The story treats the subject of hustling with some sensitivity: the guy has been more or less driven to doing it by virtue of being an illegal alien and unable to find other ready employment, and he is treated sympathetically. The cinematography is acceptable. It's an entertaining 84 minutes but not a film I would add to my own collection. The bar is set a bit lower for this genre so true masterpieces are rare. All the same, it's worth a viewing, and avid collectors of gay-themed indie films would not be disappointed.

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Yet Another Gay Hustler Movie
We viewers have been innundated with gay hustler movies lately, to the point where it's becoming a cliche. What is the endless fascination? Frankly, I'm sick of them. That said, I have to admit that I had a bit of a bias against this movie from the start. This movie did nothing to break out of the gay hustler cliche. The acting is pretty good (except for the whiny, cursing models) and pretty good-looking but the dialog is unbelievably bad. It pivots from soap opera exchanges to allegedly funny one-liners, although I did chuckle at the stuck elevator scene. Sad that some seemingly talented actors couldn't have been some better dialog. The plot has no real story arc or climax. It just sort of meanders from one scene to another without any real direction. The characterizations are pretty sloppy, too. Ian is pretty well-developed but the screenwriter doesn't seem to know where he's going with Conrad. Is Conrad a jerk? Are we supposed to feel sympathy toward him because of his recent breakup? He comes across as petty and vindictive (the blanket incident described in the elevator) and that's a dangerous position to place a major character in. In any movie or story, if you have an unlikeable character as a lead, you'd better make sure s/he has some redeeming quality. And Conrad has none. Some of the minor characters are irritating, too: Emily and Ted although the grandfather was one of the bright spots of the movie. <
>In the end, the movie never really answers the question posed in its tagline: "What are you worth?" It would have been a much better movie if it did.