MIT Lecture Series Committee

Rated unrated
95 minutes

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format: dvd

Were the World Mine (2008)

Love is in the air thanks to a magic potion whipped up by an imaginative student in this playful independent comedy with music. Timothy (Tanner Cohen) is a bright young man who is attending an upscale private high school, Morgan Hill, thanks to the hard work and sacrifice of his mother (Judy McLane). Timothy is also gay and doesn't care who knows it, which doesn't make him popular with his classmates; his closest friends, a girl nicknamed Frankie (Zelda Williams) and her boyfriend, Max (Ricky Goldman), attend another school. Timothy has a serious crush on Jonathon (Nathaniel David Becker), but Jonathon isn't interested in boys, to Timothy's chagrin. Timothy is cast as Puck in the school's spring musical, a musical adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, and inspired by his character's machinations, Timothy tries to recreate the love potion used in the play. Miraculously, Timothy arrives at a formula that actually works, and after accidentally dousing Max and having to fend off his advances, Timothy sprays Jonathan with the concoction and soon has the boy of his dreams. However, before long Timothy's magic potion gets loose, and things get very lively on campus, among both the students and the teachers. Were the World Mine was the first feature film from director Tom Gustafson, and won the Audience Award at the 2008 Torino International Gay and Lesbian Film Festival. [allmovie.com]

This picture dares to summon the spirit of the Bard as well as the ghost of Arthur Freed and succeeds as a rousing, warm-hearted spectacle.
      -- Stephen Farber, Hollywood Reporter. Read this review.