Basically what we got here is a 90 minute well shot and acted PSA about safe sex and the paranoia that may ensue when engaging in sexual relations with others.
Manny has a problem. After having sex with a close friend of his, Mary – a seemingly very sweet girl, his hypochondriac personality goes into overdrive and his conscience gives birth to two mobster looking guys in suits who berate him about the dangers of casual sex. Manny freaks and winds up at the clinic for testing. He passes all of the physical tests, turning up STD free, but his neurosis continues to chew at his brain. He can’t help but think about all the men that Mary may have been with and the dangers that he’s putting himself in by being with her intimately. But it doesn’t stop there. Like a horrid STD, Manny’s paranoia spreads to his good friend Brian who, after being locked into a couple of crazy conversations about promiscuity, begins to doubt the safety of being with his own girlfriend. Meanwhile, Manny has neglected Mary and has found someone else, another girl named Mary, someone who he imagines to be the “perfect girl”, untainted, a virgin. But when he finds out that she has slept with five men and has never been tested for STDs, he freaks once again and before long their relationship begins to crumble, just like the one between him and the first Mary and the relationship between Brain and his girlfriend which has since gone down the shitter thanks to Manny’s paranoid rants.
Yes, there’s somewhat of an interesting love story in here, but it’s drowned out as all of these characters simply become soapboxes for a whiny rant about safe sex. So whiny in fact that midway into the film, you just wanna dunk this Manny guy’s head in a toilet and smack his a*s with a tire iron. Now there’s something to whine about. By the time the film is finished and you find out who dumped who and who’s still together, you’re too irritable to care.
“Mary/Mary” is currently making the festival rounds and then maybe it will find its way into high school classrooms. Bring lots of White Out with you, kids!
