Editor's Rating
JUST US GUYS is a wonderful, hilarious tale of the life of a gay father and his straight son told through a series of vlogs. The vlogs are full of many comedic moments, but the series as a whole has an important purpose. The message is powerful and communicated very well. If you like Gilmore Girls and the friendship between Rory and Lorelai Gilmore, then you will really enjoy this series.
Anyone remember Gilmore Girls? If you’re one of those fans that’s binge-watching it on Netflix, stop what you’re doing right now. Rory and Lorelai fans unite! Seriously. Put the popcorn or ice cream down. You might find a new addiction in this article. There’s comedy, there’s drama and there’s an awesome friendship between a father and his son. Ready for laugh-out-loud entertainment? Well, let me introduce you to Max and Scott.
JUST US GUYS is a new web series about the life of a gay father and his straight son through a series of vlogs. The series was created by Chris Lilly, written by Chris Lilly and Mark Litton and directed by Tony Oliver and Larry Litton. In a series of short video blogs, we learn about Max Sherman’s (Skyler Seymour) hilariously awesome friendship with his dad, Scott Young (Scott Hislop). The episodes range from about a little over two minutes up to seven minutes in length. These episodes are a perfect length. They don’t feel like they drag on resulting in boredom. You can watch an episode pretty quick. Even though I bet you’ll be tempted to watch another one as soon as possible. True story.
Max’s mission to create these vlogs started with his interest in making sure his voice was heard about the popular, sometimes controversial topic of having gay parents. He wants to show the world that gay parents can be amazing parents too. What better platform than the Internet? Max eventually convinces his dad to join him and they come up with the name “Just Us Guys.” The two discuss various random topics ranging from school, love for Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, television, Halloween, their parents, crushes and more. The writing was well done. It was light-hearted, fun, relevant and interesting. It’s hard to write comedy and this series was successful. It could’ve gotten corny, but it didn’t.
This series is very entertaining because the two actors have so much chemistry together. It’s wonderful to see them play off of each other with high energy. The acting was great. Sometimes there can be a danger of “indicating” feelings or emotions with facial expressions or gestures. At first, I was afraid of this danger, but there wasn’t anything to worry about. There were a lot of moments that felt genuine and it’s exciting to say that a lot of them were comical. Scott Hislop was definitely a joy to watch. Seymour had some really great moments too. I believed that they were pretty close. They were so convincing that it made me and probably a majority of their audience want to actually get to know these awesome people.
The cinematography (Tali Litmanovitz and Rafael Leyva) and editing (Clinton Steeds) was convincingly done as an actual vlog with much better quality than a webcam. The production design (Garett Quigley), set decoration (Stefani Stein) and costume design (Annalisa Adams) all worked together to achieve a very nice look for this series. It’s full of color which aids the comic feel, but it’s believable for these characters to live in this type of world, in this type of house or apartment. It’s realistic. It’s warm and welcoming. Casual. This makes it more comfortable and easier for viewers to relate to these characters since there’s obviously no fourth wall. The sound was crisp, clear and not too overpowering or too quiet. Like I said in an earlier statement, it’s much better quality than you would get if you were actually making a vlog.
There are some elements missing in this web series. There aren’t any opening or closing credits and there’s no scoring. It makes sense if you want to go for a vlog type of feel, but at the same time the hard work featured in the series isn’t being credited. For the record, I was so engaged in listening to these two characters talk about different topics that I wasn’t paying attention to whether there was music playing or not. These missing elements don’t affect the strength of the show at all.
JUST US GUYS is a wonderful, hilarious and highly entertaining story of a family like any other family just simply living life. A life so interesting and humorous that you will wish that these characters were your best friends. If you’re a fan of Rory and Lorelai Gilmore, then I highly suggest that you check out this series!
For more information about the show, please visit:
OFFICIAL WEBSITE: http://www.82893productions.com/just-us-guys.html
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