Coming to DVD today Tuesday, September 2: TWO: THE STORY OF ROMAN & NYRO
Heather Winters’ portrait of a gay family debuted at the Nashville Film Festival last year. Screenings followed at several LGBT fests, including Miami, Inside Out, Honolulu, Philadelphia’s QFest, Outfest, Atlanta, and Tampa, as well as Palm Springs, SF Doc Fest, and Arclight DocFest.
Winters’ film is well-meaning and generally inoffensive, offering a look at two gay dads and their twin sons, the products of a surrogate pregnancy. One of the dads, Desmond, is a celebrated songwriter and producer who counts hits by Bon Jovi, Aerosmith, KISS, and Kelly Clarkson in his portfolio. The other dad, Curtis, oddly describes himself as the kids’ “mom,” while the boys themselves are cute enough moppets. Generally, they’re a nice enough family, but aside from the celebrity connections, and some groan-inducing adoption of new Age-tinged Eastern spirituality, there’s nothing interesting, dramatic, or compelling about them that distinguishes Winters’ workmanlike and too-saccharine project from numerous other docs about gay fatherhood, while the involvement of the dads as producers lends an unfortunate vanity project feel to the whole underwhelming affair.
what (not) to doc 