Pillow flop: Rock Hudson's memory deserves better than the misguided '50s Hollywood-closet comedy Straight-Jacket.

Straight-Jacket * Written and directed by Richard Day * Starring Matt Letscher, Carrie Preston, Adam Greer, Veronica Cartwright, Jack Plotnick * Here Films

Someone, someday, is going to make a bang-up movie about what it took to be a major gay or bi Film star like Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, James Dean, or Anthony Perkins back in the '50s, when walking the line between a private life and a public life was like traversing a minefield. The makers of that flick will know that the '50s weren't only about big-haired camp but also repression, paranoia, misguided patriotism, and the stirrings of political upheaval. Those moviemakers will surely be smart enough to create actual characters and not dredge up recycled caricatures from bad TV shows about the era.

Which brings us to Straight Jacket. Directed and adapted by Richard Day from his play, this frothy farce concerns Guy Stone (Matt Letscher), a vain, fairly dim-witted Eisenhower-era movie god who cultivates a straight image while happily humping any hunk in tight trousers. Caught in a police raid at a gay bar and urged by his vinegary agent (Veronica Cartwright) to butch it up so he won't lose the year's plum movie role--the lead in Ben-Hur--Stone agrees to a quickie marriage to a studio secretary (Carrie Preston) who has bought his public image hook, line, and sinker. Complications ensue when a homophobic competitor (Jack Plotnick--whose character might have been dangerously funny played as a right-wing blowhard, a la Heston, rather than the all-purpose Sitcom 101 jerk we're presented with here) sets out to blow Stone's cover. And matters get worse when Stone flips for a handsome left-leaning novelist (Adam Greer) whose politics, passion, and pecs inspire him to tell the studio bosses where to stick it.

OK, we've heard worse movie ideas. And Day (Girls Will Be Girls) gets off a wry line now and then--listen for a throwaway reference to actor George Nader, one of Rock Hudson's hottest boyfriends. But the dialogue, for the most part, is probably no wittier than something you heard (or said) at last weekend's party.

What really derails things---aside from those repeated, eye-poppingly awful CGI exteriors of the hero's estate--is how the tone and period details seem to have been inspired by too many viewings of Grease and Little Shop of Horrors. Letscher, who displays good comic chops, looks more like the love child of Bill Pullman and Peter Sarsgaard than '50s movie giant Rock Hudson. Carrie Preston, smothered in a Carol Burnettskit version of Doris Day's bouffants, appears to be weirdly channeling Renee Zellweger in Down With Love.

Straight-Jacket's themes--the price of staying in the closet, the pain of being an unwitting beard, the McCarthy witch hunts that destroyed lives--are way too rich to merely get popped like champagne bubbles in a campy comedy. If this flick overstays its welcome by an hour or so, it's because we grow antsy for the hero and the movie to finally get real.

Rebello also writes for Spin, Playboy, and Hollywood Life.