Review of East Side Story

Filed Under DVDs, Gay Film | July 29th, 2008 

East Side Story on DVDRecently, I managed to watch a movie that’s just hitting the video racks at the local video rental stores where I live, that I’ve wanted to watch – East Side Story.

Set in East LA, East Side Story is a ‘coming out’ story with Latino flavour. Diego Campos (René Alvarado) is a young man working at his grandmother’s (Irene DeBari) family restaurant and having an affair with Pablo (David Berón) a secretly gay real estate agent.

But people change and neighborhoods change. Pablo wants to get married to the flighty Bianca Campos (Gladise/Gladys Jimenez), Diego’s aunt. That puts Diego out of the picture; until Pablo decides that he still wants man-sex on the side.

The Latino neighborhood is also becoming more and more gentrified and ‘the gays’ are all flocking to snap up some good real estate bargains. Enter Wesley (Steve Callahan) and his boyfriend Jonathon (Cory Schneider). Diego falls for Wesley who’s very interested in him except there’s the problem of Jonathon – and a big problem this bitchy, racist queen is. To make things even more interesting, Diego gets ‘outed’ to the mainly homophobic staff at the restaurant; which poses more than a few problems…Fortunately, grandma is there to support Diego’s dreams – and eventually he’s assisted instead of hindered by his aunt.

I found East Side Story to be one of the warmer and funnier ‘coming out’ types of movies I’ve seen in awhile; I highly recommend watching it.