‘Horseplay’ Review – A Baffling And Meaningless Outing

Directed By: Marco Berger

Starring: Bruno Giganti, Augustin Machta

Plot Summary: In the hot Argentine summer, a group of friends get together to enjoy the holiday. They drink, party hard and make videos together. A rare mix of homophobia and horseplay comes together; however, under the surface, jealousy and violence begin to emerge. A twisted triangle of friends between a repressed gay, a secret bisexual boy and a homophobe, will push tensions to the limit.

In the play No Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre wrote the now famous sentence, “Hell is other people.” This line certainly pops in your head while watching Horseplay. A group of guys gather together during a sweltering summer in Argentina. Things start off fairly innocently with general mayhem in the form of horsing-around and hard partying. What starts off as a harmless hang with the boys quickly ramps up to violence in this middling drama. While Horseplay is pretty unremarkable in most respects, it does impress on one front. Rarely do you watch a movie and think, who is this movie actually for?

On the surface, this seems like a movie that might appeal to straight males, what with the intense dude-bro fun, and casual conversations of women and sex. Yet, this movie is overflowing with homoeroticism and a ton of male nudity, which would no doubt be off-putting to most straight guys. You might be thinking, well duh, this is aimed at gay men. And, you might be right, as director Marco Berger fills this movie to the brim with naked good-looking men. However, the annoying toxic macho bravado coupled with a generous portion of grossly casual homophobia will no doubt alienate this group as well. “Wait, what about the arthouse crowd?” you might be saying. It’s slowly paced, it’s angsty as hell and it’s very in your face with its sex and nudity. Again, the movie feels far too shallow and surface level to connect with the majority of arthouse buffs. Casual viewers will of course be very put off by just how glacial the pacing is.

Credit where it’s due, as advertised, there is a lot of horseplay to go around. Lots of it. In fact, there is so much of it, if you’re lucky, your brain will shut itself down by the midway point. The director seems like he wants to make a film that is a clever satire of, and commentary on, toxic masculinity. Had this been the case, this could have made the over-the-top dude-bro’ing not only palatable but a lynchpin for the film. Sadly though, this is not at all the case. Which is bad, since all you are left with is nearly 90 minutes of college-aged frat boys fucking about and droning on and on. It has a lot of bluster but nothing to actually say or anything to add to the discourse. For example, there is a brief scene where the men say that porn is not for women, to which the women of course disagree. In between just a cavalcade of douche-baggery, you will get drawn out philosophical musings that feel deep but aren’t. At the end of the day, the movie feels like a cringe-excuse to get male eye candy on the screen yet wrap it up in a faux-meaningful wrapper.

Horseplay is just a baffling, frustrating film that wants you to think it’s smart and deep, when it’s just a steaming pile of horse…. well, you get the picture. What could have been a really interesting exploration of “boys will be boys” male bonding just feels hollow and, frankly, kinda gross in its overt distain for marginalized groups.

Horseplay is currently playing in select theaters and is available on Digital platforms. 

[youtube https://youtu.be/vzI79vlj68g]