“Coffee Date” is an amateurish, silly non-comedy about a divorced 35-year-old L.A. guy named Todd whose slacker brother hooks him up on a blind date with someone named Kelly. Todd is expecting a hottie, and Kelly is a hottie – albeit a gay male hottie. Todd, realizing his brother played a joke on him, then plays his own joke by pretending to be romantically involved with Kelly. Todd’s brother, not realizing this is just a joke, tells their mother that Todd is gay. Todd’s mom then tells anyone within earshot that her son is gay – and not that there’s anything wrong with that, of course.
Needless to say, hilarity never ensues as Todd protests he is straight while everyone around him assumes he is gay. In order to find a gay-themed comedy of errors as lame, predictable and puerile as “Coffee Date,” you’d have to go back to 1976 for the egregious “Norman, Is That You?” But that old film, despite its many flaws, at least had Redd Foxx, Pearl Bailey and Wayland Flowers for reasonable distraction.
“Coffee Date,” in comparison, offers B-listers and has-beens including Wilson Cruz, Jonathan Silverman, Sally Kirland, Leigh Taylor-Young and Deborah Gibson as the lethargic ensemble who try (and fail) to milk laughs from a dry script. At the center of the mess is Jonathan Bray, a handsome but not very engaging actor who plays Todd with unconvincing and strangely outdated apprehension.
Honestly, this awful little movie should have stayed in the closet.
