A scrappy, subversive romp, “Modest Male Exposure 2: I Dream of Genes” turns trash cinema into a surprisingly sweet and funny ride.
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Microbudget movies don’t have the luxury of hiding behind gloss. When you don’t have a studio budget, there’s nowhere for the seams to go; you see every rough cut, hear every hiss of background noise, and feel every moment where the cast looks more like a group of friends than trained performers.
That can be a liability. It can also be, when the chemistry is right, exactly where the magic lives. Such is the case with Modest Male Exposure 2: I Dream of Genes.
This ultra-low-budget comedy-drama follows four main characters, including a transgender man and a wild man-child who discovers he has a fully grown son he never knew about. It also repeatedly floods the frame with mostly male, entirely gratuitous nudity. That alone feels like a fun little act of cinematic rebellion. For once, the “pointless” nudity isn’t centered on women’s bodies; instead, it’s a parade of very real-looking men of all shapes, sizes, and comfort levels, weaponizing the male gaze against itself.
It’s sleazy. It’s messy. It’s proudly queer. And beneath all the dick jokes and Devil’s Ball debauchery, it’s got a surprisingly tender heart.
Modest Male Exposure 2 technically spins out of the 2022 short film Modest Male Exposure, but you don’t need to have seen the original to roll with the feature.
If you have, though, the nudity and locker-room fixation feel less like shock tactics and more like a logical escalation of the first film’s thesis.
The original short (watch it here) follows TV reporter and amateur rugby player Sam Derrick (Jed Ryan). While blogging about his recent news segments—very much in a Carrie Bradshaw, “I couldn’t help but wonder…” register—Sam muses on male modesty, exposure in public spaces, and gender-segregated facilities.
We jump from a live post-game locker room interview with the coach of the Seymour Cocks (nudge, nudge, wink, wink) that accidentally broadcasts nude pro athletes… to a nudist resort where no one seems remotely shy… to male high school students who refuse to shower after gym or use open urinals… to hand-wringing over openly LGBTQ people and women sharing these spaces.
It’s a wry little comedy about America’s bizarre, puritanical, wildly hypocritical relationship with nudity and the human body.
Modest Male Exposure was directed and co-written by Clover Welsh, better known as drag comedian Lady Clover Honey, who also appears in dual roles as both male and female characters. Jed Ryan co-wrote and produced it, as well as starring as Sam.
For Modest Male Exposure 2: I Dream of Genes, Ryan returns as Sam and takes over full writing and directing duties. The feature marks his filmmaking debut and expands the characters and ideas from the short into a looser, more traditional narrative.
In this new incarnation, Sam Derrick is a forty-something, never-married rugby player and sports journalist who has fully embraced his swinging lifestyle.
He spends his time with his teammates, his bedmates, and a rotating cast of pan-sexual play parties. Then a DNA test from a company called “I Dream of Genes” drops a bomb: Sam has a grown son named Rev from a long-ago college fling.
Rev (a very charming Jonathan Wong Frye) shows up with zero anger or resentment, just a genuine desire to get to know his newly discovered father. Instead of the expected “how could you abandon me?” drama, Rev is simply in awe of Sam’s hedonistic lifestyle. The two quickly become friends, blurring the lines between father-son bonding and wild, no-limits nightlife.
The story begins with a series of vignettes centered on the men of Sam’s rugby team. They’re grown adults, well past the college “finding yourself” years, trying (with varying degrees of success) to navigate romantic relationships while fiercely prioritizing their friendships and their shared obsession with rugby.
It’s easy to see why the film has been compared to Sex and the City for men: this is a cluster of older, post-college characters hashing out sex, love, identity, and aging, but always returning to the safety net of their chosen family.
The first act is very silly and very horny, with a large amount of full-frontal male nudity bridging the short’s satirical interest in body politics with the feature’s more chaotic, Troma-esque energy.
The tone is broad, campy, and proudly low-brow, in the grand tradition of John Waters-esque filth and transgressive fun.
Once Rev enters the picture, something shifts. The movie suddenly sprouts a soft center without losing its perverse edge.
Watching Sam try to figure out what being a father actually means—especially when your life has been built around avoiding responsibility—is where the emotional charge lives. Rev’s total lack of bitterness, his eagerness to connect, and his wide-eyed fascination with Sam’s world give the movie an unexpected sweetness that plays nicely against all the sleaze.
Of course, this is still a movie that builds to a notorious costume party/orgy called “The Devil’s Ball,” where Sam and Rev’s relationship and boundaries are tested in ways that are sometimes funny, sometimes deeply cringe.
However, for all the sleaze, Modest Male Exposure 2 isn’t just trying to be the world’s horniest rugby comedy.
One of its strongest elements is a subplot involving Ari, a transgender man and fellow player on the team. Ari has a wonderfully supportive partner and is considering phalloplasty, in part because of the team’s culture of constant nudity as part of the male bonding ritual.
In a film packed with pan-sexual orgies and dick puns, Ari’s storyline is surprisingly grounded.
It’s not played for laughs or treated as a cheap “issue”; instead, it quietly explores what it means to navigate masculinity, embodiment, and belonging in a space where being “one of the guys” is linked to how comfortable you are baring everything.
The movie as a whole is extremely queer-friendly and unabashedly sex-positive.
Pan-sexual play parties, drag performers, trans characters, kink, and non-traditional relationship structures are baked into this world without apology. They’re not treated as punchlines; they’re treated as reality—messy, chaotic, sometimes ridiculous reality, but reality nonetheless.
Let’s be clear: this is ultra-low-budget cinema, and you can feel it in every technical choice.
The sound design is often rough. There’s noticeable background hiss in some scenes, and any time the production ventures outside or shoots in busy public locations, ambient noise crashes the party, sometimes overwhelming the dialogue. The editing is choppy, with abrupt cuts and a general looseness that make it feel like you’re watching raw footage stitched together just enough to qualify as a feature.
Visually, it never approaches anything you’d call “cinematic.” It’s not found footage, but it has that rough, handheld vibe of a few friends grabbing a camera and shooting on the fly, grabbing whatever locations they can, and hoping the neighbors don’t call the cops.
The acting is similarly uneven. It absolutely feels like a group of friends decided to make a movie on weekends, and on a purely craft level, that shows.
But there’s also real charm in that DIY energy.
Modest Male Exposure 2 looks and feels like a community project: scrappy, imperfect, and wildly ambitious compared to the resources available. But there’s a passion and an authenticity that goes a long way toward making the film’s messiness feel more endearing than fatal.
It’s often hilarious. The movie knows it’s pushing boundaries, and it doesn’t care if that makes some viewers uncomfortable. In fact, that’s kind of the point.
In a country that feels increasingly hostile to queer lives, sexual freedom, and bodily autonomy, there’s something cathartic about a film that responds with rampant nudity, pan-sexual chaos, and a deeply queer, joyfully trashy vision of community.
Modest Male Exposure 2 may be scruffy and technically clumsy, but it feels like a middle finger to conservative, oppressive, and bigoted politics. It’s a reminder that there’s still space for art that refuses to apologize for its existence, its sexuality, or its refusal to look “respectable.”
If the phrase “Troma-esque” makes you smile, you’re exactly the target audience. If not, consider that your content warning.
Overall Rating (Out of 5 Butterflies): 3
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