Spoiler Alert (now on Peacock) finds former The Big Bang Theory star Jim Parsons tackling another leading-man film role. He follows 2020’s The Boys in the Band with this adaptation of Spoiler Alert: The Hero Dies, Michael Ausiello’s memoir about his relationship with his husband, who fought cancer before passing away in 2015. Parsons co-stars with Ben Aldridge – whose ballooning career includes a stint on Fleabag, playing Thomas Wayne in Pennyworth and a major role in M. Night Shyamalan’s Knock at the Cabin – and together, they find more than enough chemistry to keep this weeper of a dramedy afloat.
SPOILER ALERT: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
The Gist: Michael (Parsons) and Kit (Aldridge) are in a hospital bed. Kit’s skin is pale and blotchy, and tubes trail from his prone body. Michael’s curled up next to him. Then Michael narrates, and I paraphrase very very loosely: this is the sad part, the ending tacked on to the beginning to hook us before we jump back 14 years to happier days. Michael was a staff writer at TV Guide, which means nowadays, he’s almost certainly freelancing. TV Guide was his dream job, because he revels in everything television. He even imagines the flashbacks within the primary flashback, about his childhood, as an ’80s sitcom with him as the misfit star with two annoying brothers, a single mom and a late father. He was a chubby kid, but now he’s a tall dweeb, a descriptor levied upon him by a woman who’s drunk and best friends with Kit. Kit, who Michael meets in a dance club. Michael, who doesn’t dance, is in a dance club pretty much against his will, and it’s kismet, because he’s soon kissing the guy he just met rimshot thank you good night please tip the wait staff.
Michael is demure, buttoned up. Kit is confident, outgoing. But they click. They end up back at Kit’s place, and Michael blanches – he lost a lot of weight since childhood and is insecure about his body, he says. Cut to the sitcom set, where young Michael (Brody Caines) says the kids at school tease him, calling him Dead Dad Mike the Fat Fudgepacker. Kit understands. They can just talk. And talk, they do. After the second date – if you can call almost hooking up after meeting at a club a “first date,” although we shouldn’t get hung up on technicalities – Michael agrees reluctantly to go back to his place this time. Reluctantly, because his place is positively exploding with Smurfs shit. Figurines, posters, bedsheets, a four-foot Papa Smurf statue, ALL the Smurfs shit. It’s not a gamebreaker for Kit, though. I mean, they’re really clicking. Even though Michael still believes, “You always felt like premium cable to my network sitcom.”
And so This Movie is Their Story. We learn that Kit still hasn’t told his parents that he’s gay, and when they drive down to NYC from Pennsylvania after Kit has an emergency appendectomy, he ends up blurting out that he’s gay in front of Michael and Sally Field, because Sally Field plays Kit’s mother, Marilyn. She’s cool with it, and so is his dad (Bill Irwin). Michael and Kit move in together, and I don’t know what happens with all the Smurfs shit, because now there’s only a few shelves of it. They spend Christmas together, which is another Michael obsession – the tinsel and trees just make him light up. They pose for a Christmas selfie and then the couples-selfie Christmas cards start piling up, 13 of them, and now it’s 2014, and they’re no longer clicking. They’re in counseling, and trial-separated. They still see each other and do couples things, but don’t live together and we feel the melancholy pall of a once incredibly loving relationship taking its final breaths. But Kit has been experiencing some discomfort. Pain. Appointments. Tests. Biopsies. Neuroendocrine cancer. Aggressive. Chemo. Hair loss. Vomiting. Ups. Downs. Ups. Downs. Michael is there for all of it. There’s still a lot of love here. And yes, we’re going to be bawling before this is over.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Spoiler Alert is Bros crossed with Terms of Endearment (or maybe the wildly underrated Ordinary Love).
Performance Worth Watching: Parsons is one of those sensitive actors who, when he cries, you have no choice but to cry too, goddammit.
Memorable Dialogue: Kit heads into Michael’s bedroom and Michael turns to his ridiculous statue and says, “Oh, Papa.”
Sex and Skin: Kissing, straddling, out-of-frame fondling.
Our Take: Not judging! I have a lot of Star Wars shit. To each their own shit, I say.
Anyway. In 2022, gay men staked their claim on the rom-com (Bros), group-vacay-com (Fire Island), and now, the cancer weepie. Big year! (In all sincerity!) And these movies generally outdid any heteronormie riffs on the genres. Spoiler Alert is a tender, sweet, occasionally silly story with familiar structural bones balanced by Parsons and Aldridge’s rock-steady and deeply empathetic performances. We enjoy spending time with them, even when things aren’t great. The actors cultivate a dynamic that touches on some very real emotions without becoming overly melodramatic. Their interplay is gently witty and subtly sexy. You can easily see why one falls in love with the other, and the other falls in love with the one.
You might take or leave the gimmickry at hand – the sitcom flashbacks are clever but hamper the narrative flow, and the narration is a touch intrusive. But director Michael Showalter (The Big Sick) and screenwriters Dan Savage and David Marshall Grant handle Ausiello’s story with a gentle, caring, loving touch. They maintain an unwaveringly earnest tone that allows Parsons and Aldridge to explore the complexities of long-term relationships without falling into mawkishness. Where other movies might indulge glibness or Oscar-clip force, Spoiler Alert opts for subtlety and clarity. And if you’re not feeling the ache at least a little bit, it might be time to call the coroner.
Our Call: STREAM IT. Spoiler Alert is conventional in some ways, but lovely and heartfelt in many others.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.