"Room For Rent": Quirky Gay Subtext Comedy

As a high school student, Mitch (Canadian comedian Mark Little) wins the lottery and goes home with $3.1 million  (this is one of those annoying Canadian movies that pretends to be American, so he wins American dollars).

He turns into an insufferable jerk, causing his friends to dump him and everyone in town to hate him, while squandering his money on fancy hotel rooms and frivolous investments.  His only  remaining friend, Huey (Patrick J. Adams, left), vanishes when the Lamborghinis run out.

12 years later, famous as "the boy who squandered $3.1 million,"  Mitch is living with his parents (SCTV alum Mark McKinney and Stephnie Weir, best known as Karen "Call me Angelique" of Crazy Ex-Girlfriend). He reads War and Peace, plays video games, and refuses to help out around the house or get a job, even though money is tight: Dad is a financial advisor, but no one wants financial advice from the father of the boy who squandered $3.1 million.  They decide to take in a boarder.

Thus the movie's title, Room for Rent.

Carl (Brett Gelman) shows up in the dead of night, leering and muttering about the knives in his valise, but Mom and Dad are desperate, and rent him the room.

He turns out to be the perfect anti-Mitch, polite, thoughtful, helpful around the house.  And he tries hard to redeem Mitch, reconnecting him with his friends Lindsay (Carla Gallo), Huey, and Rocco (Tom Anniko), getting him a job as a canvasser for a green movement, helping him plan a big retirement party for Dad (Warren, who he calls "War").

Mitch is, for some reason, suspicious, and takes every attempt to help as an insult.  What is this guy's angle?

True, Carl is creepily flirtatious, asking Mitch "Where do you sleep?", pushing him to have a drink, leering at him, touching him, implying that he is gay, implying to Lindsay that are lovers.

Mitch enlists Lindsay and Huey to dig up dirt on Carl, so his parents will kick him out.  They discover that Mitch invested in Carl's big invention (an umbrella that evaporates raindrops), but failed to market it, so Carl lost everything and was forced to move in with his parents.  So he wanted revenge.

His revenge plan involves helping Mitch reconcile with old friends, getting him a job, being nice to his parents, and flirting with him?

Does he actually want a relationship?

There is no indication that Mitch and Lindsay were ever romantic partners.  No kissing, no romantic gestures.  They could easily be friends.

When Lindsay discovers that Mitch has a terrible tattoo of a man on a dolphin on his back, she asks "What was the plan?  To never have sex with anyone again?"  He replies "No, to have sex, but carefully, so they would never see my back."

They're both hiding the gender of Mitch's proposed partners.

Nor is there any indication that Carl is straight.  When Lindsay offers to fix him up with a date for the big party, he states that he only likes women who are independent, employed, can cook, and are between the ages of 18-21. But he's obviously trying to get her to back off.  His main interest is obviously Mitch.

Everything works out.  Mitch and Carl reconcile with a rooftop hug and hand-holding, and go into business together.













The last scene is ambiguous:  Mitch is moving into a new house.  Lindsay is there, but there's no indication that they are living together, or dating.

Could Room for Rent be a quirky romance between two heavily wounded men?