Trick's protagonist, Gabriel (Christian Campbell), is a model of bland, lowest-common- denominator appeal—a musical composer but not a drama queen, dorky but kinda cute, shy but kinky in an unthreatening way (his fantasy is to be serviced while he plays the piano). On the subway one night, he encounters Mark (John Paul Pitoc), a go-go boy whose seeming blockheadedness masks a soft side and a journalism degree. The two spend all night looking for a place to fuck—they're repeatedly thwarted and, owing to the fatuous contingencies of romantic comedy, fall in love.

Trick draws on audience empathy for Gabe—alienated Everygay—and revels in the reassuring accessibility of an idealized object of desire. Or at least in theory it does. The film is so insecure about its own premise—the idea that these two should get together—that it reflexively surrounds them with grotesques. Everyone else is obnoxious, idiotic, or pathetic. Directed in anonymous fashion by Jim Fall, Trick (working title: Gay Boy) plays like a neutered dicktease. Sex is the nominal driving force, but the film couldn't be any less sexy. Or any more misogynist. Tori Spelling, shrill and horsey, plays a monstrous fag hag; Gabe's roommate's girlfriend is essentially a breathy, dumb, one-note joke. This film is so retrogressive that it would, in a sane world, inspire not drooling praise but a revolt—in that sense, Trick may have some revolutionary worth after all.