I’m doing this Blogging A to Z thing for the month of April 2026. I did this 10 years ago, and it was pretty random. For this month at least, I’m focusing on queer media – movies, books, TV, etc., by, for, or about queer people.
Also, I’m using WordPress’ AI to generate images and think they’re sometimes just hilariously wrong.
4th Man Out is a 2015 comedy about Adam (Evan Todd), an auto mechanic in a working class town somewhere in upstate NY, who comes out to his friends Chris (Parker Young), Nick (Chord Overstreet), and Ortu (Jon Gabrus) after a night of heavy drinking to celebrate his 24th birthday.
The movie is a combination of fish-out-of-water and buddy comedy. Adam is 24 and is essentially trying to learn how to be gay. He’s good looking and personable but turns into an awkward mess trying to talk to men he’s interested in. The other guys literally don’t know any other gay people and try and fail, but keep trying to be good friends to Adam and help him on this journey.
What follows are bad dates, a catfishing episode, interactions with a super religious neighbor, a painfully awkward coming out to Adam’s Catholic family that entails a priest who thinks he’s been summoned to give last rights, and some mixed signals that strain the friendship between Adam and Chris.
All the loose ends are tied up neatly by the end of the movie. Everyone’s happy. Adam’s family is fine with him being gay. Friendships are restored. Adam hasn’t found his true love – it’s not that kind of movie – but he’s at least learned to behave like a normal human being around guys.
I don’t re-watch movies very often, but I’ve probably seen this one half a dozen times. It’s short (under 90 minutes), funny, kinda sweet, and has a great cast.
I always thought it’s not winning any awards, but it’s a fun movie to watch. But then when I was researching the movie for this post, I learned that it has won a bunch of awards, but also the critics don’t love it. On Rotten Tomatoes, it’s got only 54% positive critics reviews (out of only 13 reviews), but 3.8 out of 5 stars from over 500 audience reviews, which is pretty good. And about half the awards it received are film festival audience awards. So pay attention to the audience, ignore the critics.
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