Movie with Abe: Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?

Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?
Directed by Matt Cooper
Released September 16, 2016

Sex and violence are both hot topics that are overwhelmingly found in movies and television these days. Most would agree that there is far too much of both, and that they are usually portrayed in quite a gratuitous manner. There’s a new film out that doesn’t show much of either but focuses its storyline entirely on the battle between a need for sex and a need for guns. “Is That a Gun in Your Pocket?” is a silly but very amusing picture of one Texas town where one woman decided to take a stand against guns and knew just what to withhold to make her voice heard.

Jenna Keely (Andrea Anders) is happily married to Glenn (Matt Passmore) and acts as a stay-at-home mom to their two children, Sandy and Lance. When Lance brings a gun to school to show to his friend and it accidentally goes off, Jenna begins to think about the destructive, dangerous power of firearms and asks Glenn to get rid of his. When he refuses, she realizes that the only way to truly achieve change is to refuse Glenn something he desires – sex. Her approach catches on with other women in the two, pitting husbands against wives in a battle to determine how Rockford, Texas will truly be defined.

This film’s poster shows a man’s hand holding a gun that is twisted into the shape of a heart on its way to a woman’s hand gripping it from the other end. This is meant to be a comic portrayal of the gun control debate, taken to such a far extreme that it has to be laughed at. It’s the men who are more exaggerated as they think of nothing but sex and of their wives being ridiculous for deigning to be self-sufficient, and the women respond in kind by enjoying tormenting their husbands a little too much.

Anders is a fun choice to play Jenna, who has plenty of personality but is also by far the most sensible person in all of Rockford. She is ably supported by Lauren Bowles (“True Blood”), Christine Estabrook (“Desperate Housewives"), Fernanda Romero, and in a very vocal scene-stealing role, veteran actress Cloris Leachman as the women who rally behind her. Passmore (“The Glades”) has good company in Horatio Sanz, John Michael Higgins, and John Heard. Much of the events and the drama in the film is so over-the-top it’s impossible to take it seriously, but that’s also what makes it a fun and extraordinarily entertaining ride.

B+