Breakfast with Scot

If David Sedaris rewrote the script for Kramer vs. Kramer, the result would look a lot like Breakfast with Scot, the new Canadian film about a flamboyant 11-year old who is adopted by a gay couple. It’s a predictable heart-tugger that, like Sedaris’s later memoirs, comes off as sweet, unassuming – and more than a little fraudulent.

Eric (Tom Cavanagh, of TV’s Ed) and Sam (Ben Shenkman), are a professional couple who quietly try to shield their relationship from view. Eric, a former hockey player who now works as a sports broadcaster, is a closet case whose greatest fear is that the athletes he covers will discover his secret. Sam is the more open of the two, though he soldiers on in support of Eric’s need for privacy.

The couple’s attempts to play straight are compromised when Sam’s brother Billy (Colin Cunningham) skips town, precipitating his girlfriend’s fatal drug overdose. The girlfriend’s son Scot, who lives for swishy clothes and outlandish accessories – he’s a moppet drag queen in waiting – winds up as Eric and Sam’s temporary ward.

Scot starts out as a royal pain in Eric’s ass, but, with clockwork efficiency, the two eventually connect, finding common bonds via hockey, shopping and food.

Breakfast isn’t any kind of breakthrough in terms of plot; About a Boy and the aforementioned Kramer treaded the same ground. But there is joy in the performances, particularly from Bernett, who must set some kind of record for bravery in child acting. Cavanagh has excellent comic timing even when the gags fall flat, and Shenkman makes a fine impression as the Eric’s quietly decent partner. And props to director Laurie Lynd for presenting an openly gay kid, and for having him teach his ashamed father figures how to come out of the closet.

But Breakfast does have a curious ambivalence about its characters’ intimacy. Eric doesn’t dare display physical affection toward Sam in public, which is in keeping with his character, but even within their home, the pair rarely embrace; Lynd, so terrified of alienating her audience, refuses them even a simple private kiss. Toward the beginning, Scot is allowed to kiss whomever he wants, but Eric and Sam quickly swat him down and clumsily teach him about social protocol.

Through its protagonists, Breakfast teaches acceptance of being gay – but not too gay – and many of the movie’s plot points are exercises in public normalization. It’s a pleasant enough diversion, and it works as pure fluff, but it doesn’t stretch much further than an episode of Will and Grace.

Rating: ***