Any Day Now Blu-ray Review
We Are Family.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, April 26, 2013
What is the Supreme Court going to say about same sex marriage? It's one of the biggest questions facing not just
typical Court watchers, but indeed the entire United States of America, as the usually closely divided "Supremes" have
to
wrestle with a number of thorny issues, not the least of which is the seemingly overwhelming momentum of public
opinion
that the time for marriage equality has come. Even the most stalwart conservatives are on record as stating the same
sex
marriage is a civil rights issue first and foremost, and there have been some rather stunning "conversions" over the
past
few months from some unlikely right leaning politicos who have either had personal reasons or perhaps simply have
their
figurative fingers to the wind and are attempting to get out in front of what seems to be an inexorable movement at
this
point, no matter what the Supreme Court ultimately decides in the two cases it has recently finished hearing. One of
the
arguments
against same sex marriage is the oft-repeated adage that kids do best with a mother and a father,
a
so-called "statistic" that has been increasingly called into question, with all sorts of professional organizations (whom
critics call unabashedly biased) saying there's no proof that having two parents of the same sex is in any way
detrimental
to the nurturing and ultimate success of a child. How times have changed—or have they?.
Any Day Now is a
moving drama,
allegedly based on a real life incident, of two gay men in the 1970s who find themselves rather unexpectedly raising a
developmentally disabled boy but whose best intentions are indeed their entrée into a certain kind of bureaucratic hell
when the powers that be discover that the men are gay and decide that no child should be raised in such
circumstances.
How you feel about being unabashedly manipulated will probably play fairly strongly into how you feel about
Any
Day
Now, perhaps even more than how you feel about the underlying issues of gay adoption (and/or marriage). For
Any Day Now is an undeniably soap operatic treatment of a complex issue, one which reduces characters to
symbols (for both good and evil, of course), but which still manages to wrest a fair amount of emotion out of the
situation,
albeit often from out and out artifice.
Any Day Now lurches a bit uneasily from melodrama to something
approaching a bus and truck version of
Priscilla Queen of the Desert, but somewhere in between these two
extremes are some heartfelt moments to which only the most cynical will be completely immune.
Any Day Now wastes little time in setting its plot mechanics in motion, wasting even less time in developing
character. Drag queen Rudy Donatello (Alan Cumming) works at a West Hollywood dive in 1979 lip synching disco hits
with a similarly clad group of backup singers and immediately fixates on uptight,
perhaps closeted, customer Paul Fleiger (Garret Dillahunt) who stares at Rudy from the audience. When Paul comes
backstage after the show to meet Rudy, the two quickly retire to a little assignation in Paul's car which has both a
"happy ending" as well as a perilous coda when a vicious cop shows up and threatens to shoot both of the guys. Paul
reveals he's a District Attorney and suggests the policeman might be facing a murder one rap were that to happen.
Paul drives Rudy to Rudy's shabby apartment and leaves Rudy with his card, though Rudy wonders if that's simply Paul
being kind. Rudy's next door neighbor seems to be a "working girl" who likes her music up loud—as in earsplitting.
When the music is still playing next morning, Rudy bursts into her apartment and is shocked to find the woman's
abandoned child
huddled in the corner. We've previously seen this kid in the film's opening scene from the back, but now realize that
the boy is actually a Down Syndrome sufferer and is barely able to speak.
Acting almost on impulse, Rudy takes the boy, whose name is Marco (Isaac Leyva) and attempts to contact Paul for
advice. When Paul won't accept Rudy's call, Rudy of course just storms into Paul's office, making a scene and begging
Paul for advice on what to do. Paul states the kid should be handled over to Family Services, which is pretty much
what happens as soon as Rudy returns to his apartment house and finds out that Marco's mother Marianna (Jamie
Anne Allman) hasn't just not returned home, but has in fact been arrested. When Marco simply ups and walks away
from the temporary foster home and shows up back at the apartment building, that then leads Rudy with Paul's help to
approach
Marianna in prison to get her to sign away guardianship of Marco (albeit temporarily) to Rudy so that he can rescue the
boy from foster
care altogether. Marianna reluctantly agrees to do this, at which point Rudy and Paul decide to "play house", since Paul
is far more financially capable of providing for the boy. Since they know that prevailing attitudes won't allow two gay
men to raise Marco, they decide they'll pretend to be cousins.
Needless to say their subterfuge is soon uncovered by a suspicious boss of Paul's, which then sends the film
catapulting into its main courtroom
sequences where the lunacy of the situation is laid out with a lack of subtlety but no dearth of emotion. Despite the
fact that Marianna is a drug addled child abandoner, according to the "logic" of the times, she makes a more
appropriate custodial parent to Marco than the obviously (perhaps
too obviously) caring Rudy and Paul. Part of
the problem with
Any Day Now is that it paints these characters in such broad strokes that there's little nuance
and we get the suddenly perfectly domestic pair of gay men pitted against an unyielding court system (and some
hangers on, like Paul's boss) where all of the
forces lined up against Rudy and Paul might as well be wearing black hats and twirling wax mustaches. A few shades
of gray might not have
given the film any more emotional
gravitas, something it undeniably has in spades, but it might have upped the
realism angle significantly. The closest the film comes in that regard is a well meaning but by the book judge played by
Frances Fisher, who nonethless upbraids the couple for their "openly homosexual lifestyle".
The film is probably best seen as a well meaning, if occasionally screed like, call to arms for the perhaps obvious idea
that a loving home environment is more important than sexual preference.
Any Day Now also serves to show
Alan Cumming's considerable acting (and singing) chops off to a perhaps greater degree than they've ever really been
exploited before. Cumming is an unusual presence, one whose distinctive persona made him a perfect Master of
Ceremonies in the vaunted revival of
Cabaret but which has sometimes proven problematic to typical "leading
man" roles for the actor. Now there's little arguing that Rudy is
nothing like a typical leading man, but the role
really provides a showcase for Cumming, who is able to deliver snark without malice and also a surprising amount of
heartfelt bombast when necessary. If Cumming's all encompassing presence tends to push all the other actors off into
the wings, that's not necessarily a bad thing.
