Director
Michael Showalter
(THE EYES OF TAMMY FAYE, THE BIG SICK)

Starring
Jim Parsons, Ben Aldridge and Sally Field

One of the closing lines of the beautifully written and aptly named new film Spoiler Alert is “I wanted our story to be a picture-perfect, happy-ending love story. But what we got was a real love story” which is the perfect summation of this highly emotive, and charming film based on the real life relationship of TV Guide journalist Michael Ausiello and photographer Kit Cowan. Although Moviedoc states that we are a spoiler-free movie review site, this one is the exception…but after all, it’s in the title of this film. Spoiler Alert makes it known right at the beginning that this one doesn’t have the ‘happily ever after’, in fact this is based off of Michael Ausiello’s book even more overtly titled ‘Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Other Four-Letter Words’. But despite knowing that we’re going to lose one of our leads, it doesn’t stop us from being taken on a beautiful, authentic, humorous and emotional journey.

Michael (played by The Big Bang Theory’s Jim Parsons) is a geeky, scrawny, TV obsessed introvert who gets dragged along to ‘Jock Night’ at a Manhattan gay nightclub by a friend. Not quite comfortable in his surrounds, he locks eyes with a tall, dark, handsome, sweatband clad stranger on the dancefloor, who we soon learn is Kit (played by Ben Aldridge). Despite being polar opposites, the two hit it off and begin their 14 year love affair, full of many ups and downs, laughter and tears along the way until Kit’s passing from cancer.

There is such a beautiful authenticity to Spoiler Alert. It’s not afraid to show that both men have their flaws, and it doesn’t try to canonize the dead. Michael and Kit’s relationship had its troubles, one’s that many couples (gay or straight) would be able to relate to. But it also shows great amounts of genuine love. What’s done particularly well throughout is how it highlights Michael’s childhood trauma of being the overweight, gay son of a single Mom who he also loses at a tragically young age. Through the use of flashbacks done in sitcom style, it juxtaposes the life Michael had, to where he is now, but also emphasizes why the things that are most important to him are that way to begin with.

The supporting cast are magnificent, highlighted by the incomparable Sally Field as Kit’s mother. No one does ‘parent of an ailing child’ better than Sally Field, and whilst we don’t get a Steel Magnolia’s cemetery scene here, everything she does is done to nuanced perfection.

The thing that is most to be admired about this film though is its balance. Given the subject matter, it would have been so easy to make this a schmaltzy tear jerker requiring a box of Kleenex and a Gatorade just to get through it….(and after seeing A Man Called Otto a few weeks ago, I wasn’t ready for that). Instead director Michael Showalter takes the ‘less is more’ approach. Don’t get me wrong, there will be tears and they will be significant (not going to lie, I SOBBED), but Showalter picks his moments well, and even then finds perfect ways of reprieve. Spoiler Alert is like that ridiculously charming f*ck boy/girl we’ve all met and loved. We knew deep down straight off the bat that they were going to break our heart, but we went along for the ride just the same, and truth be told, we’d do it all over again given the chance. I know I certainly will with this film.

Spoiler Alert is in cinemas now.