It's both surprising and disappointing that for his follow-up to the sharply witty Jeffrey, screenwriter Paul Rudnick has chosen the path of least resistance, and molly-coddled the central premise of a small-town teacher outed on national TV with layers of sentimental pap; and weak, obvious humour.
Howard Brackett (Kline) is a nice, modest teacher in a nice, modest school in the nice, modest town of Greenleaf, Indiana. Which is rocked to its nice, modest and incredibly prejudicial roots when its most famous son, Cameron Drake (Dillon), innocently calls the sexuality of his former teacher severely into question during his Best Actor acceptance speech on Oscar night. Doh! The media - led by Selleck's aggressive, scruple-free reporter - descend and Howard's fiance Emily (Cusack), along with everyone else, wants to know what's going on.
And so there's in, there's out, there's a good portion of hokey-cokey too (particularly in a promising scene that starts with an Exploring Your Masculinity self-help tape, but wanes embarrassingly when Kline starts prancing about his living room) - and that, sadly, is all it's about. His performance (like most others here) is functional at best, and undermined by dialogue lacking spark and drama that winds predictably and wearily to excruciating finale speeches.
Both leading men are 'tache-less for this one, which is just as well or a certain scene could have locked them together in an unfortunate Stickle-bricks interface, but the film amounts to another poor offering from the fluctuating output of director Frank Oz (Little Shop Of Horrors, Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, er, Housesitter) which is far too light and reliant on the Hollywood romantic cliche to explore its topic intelligently, and - appropriately enough - leaves Kline looking like a Muppet.