Boy Culture is a film made by people just smart enough to acknowledge that the tropes of modern queer filmmaking have been reduced to cliché, but who themselves lack the courage to push beyond tried-and-true box-office formulas. Early on, lead character X (Derek Magyar) announces, “If you’re smart, you’ve guessed I’m a hustler. If you haven’t, here are two clues: I’m gay, and they’ve made a movie about me.” That glibness defines the script, in which cutesy phrases and pop-culture references are used as character-sketching shorthand. X shares his sprawling apartment with a grating young queen (Jonathon Trent) and a studly black jock (Darryl Stephens)—a triangle of unrequited love, missed signals, and mixed messages. The performers are attractive and competent; the actors color right up to the lines of their characters, but none goes beyond that, in large part because director Q. Allan Brocka (a former Seattle resident who also co-wrote the screenplay) doesn’t demand it. Upsides to Boy do exist, chief among them the film’s nonstereotypical depiction of a black man in a largely white queer setting—he’s not sassy or a one-note trick.