The Mostly Unfabulous Social Life of Ethan Green is another step back for the gay community, a shrill account of a privileged do-nothing who’s too self-absorbed to see when Mr. Right is on the receiving end of his cock. Like Showtime’s execrable Queer as Folk, it flaunts and celebrates the worst in gay behavior, asking audiences to care for characters who believe the sun revolves around them. In the opening scene alone, Ethan Green (Daniel Letterle) gets knocked out by a frisbee and is given mouth-to-mouth by a professional baseball player, Kyle (Diego Serrano), who’s just out of the closet. Even real-world gays as elitist, catty, and promiscuous as these men aren’t so stupid to think this is a way to cure a concussion. Adapted from Eric Orner’s shallow comic strip of the same name, the film operates consistently at a high-pitched, sitcomy level, recalling through its numerous flashback sequences the desperate, terribly unfunny diversions of The Family Guy. Characters like The Hat Sisters (Joel Brooks and Richard Riehle) are meant to be Ethan’s support system, but their idea of support is gawking at the young man’s embarrassments as they would the Tonys on television. As Punch, a voracious 19-year-old real estate agent whose cellphone seems to have a life of its own, Dean Shelton appears to be performing in a different movie than his co-stars, perhaps a defense mechanism against a film that sucks compassion dry.
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