All Rise...

Judge Brett Cullum finds nothing romantic or funny about taking chemo to get your ex back.

The Charge

Would you fake being sick for love?

The Case

The Love Patient is a romantic comedy where the lead character decides to do something dastardly to get the guy. Paul (Benjamin Lutz, Bite Marks) has lost the love of his life (John Wersky, Bite Marks), and he struggles with how to win him back almost a year later. While visiting a friend that runs a cancer clinic he gets a brilliant idea. He will fake having a deadly case of "the big C" and that should make his ex realize they belong together. Of course things get even more complicated as friends, family, current bisexual boyfriends, and coworkers all get involved. They all rush to the rescue, and now Paul has to go deeper and deeper into his lie or risk losing everyone all over again.

It's a cute idea, a nice looking cast, and a group of actors who are game to go to the logical extremes to mine both the romance and the comedy out of the situation. The only problem is the distasteful setup goes on way too long, and the whole scenario wears out its welcome long before the climax. It is such a strong lie, and the consequences just never seem to do it justice. People fall in and out of love a bit too conveniently, and logic is broken in many places. The script feels like it should have been baked just a bit longer with more attention to what should happen to each character. It feels a little false when it reaches to say something real. Worst of all, you never root for the two guys to get together. Everything feels about as fake as Paul's case of cancer. Meanwhile, the movie tries to get preachy about how we should love each other before we get sick and time is short.

TLA does a nice enough job with this release. The transfer is bright with a hyper color palette, so it looks like a comedy. There are no digital artifacts, and skin tones look natural. You get an option of full surround or stereo, and both are fine depending on your setup. Extras include a quick look behind the scenes with some onset footage. There are some very brief deleted scenes that don't add up to much but they are cute moments that hit the floor. And finally we get the trailer as well as a look at other features available from TLA.

This is a light little comedy about somebody pretending to have cancer. It seems abusive for anybody to put their loved ones through this just to win back an ex, but there you are with the setup for a romantic comedy. Gay audiences will certainly find the leads attractive enough, even though I wonder if some nice butt shots of the hunky leads will make up for the whole "terminal illness as a way to win someone's heart" callousness. TLA Releasing offers up a fine package for the disc, and there's not much to gripe about there. The actors in this are great, and there is a certain element of eye candy to be found. But in the end, everything rings just a bit too false for anybody to really buy any of it.

The Verdict

Guilty of faking everything a little too much.

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