'World' has a gay old time with Shakespeare

Tanner Cohen (left) and Nathaniel David Becker in a scene from ''Were the World Mine.'' (Speak productions)

A cross between "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and a gay remake of "High School Musical"? Gentles, perchance you wonder at this show. Well, wonder on while we try to make heads or tails of the swoony, sweethearted train-wreck that is "Were the World Mine." There are times when it is safe to say that a labor of love is love's labor lost, and, reader, this is one of them.

The film is a feature-length outgrowth of the 2003 short "Fairies," written by Cory James Krueckeberg and filmed by Tom Gustafson, a Hollywood casting director making his bid to be a force in queer cinema. "Were the World Mine" is nothing if not ambitious. It's the execution that falters.

Set in a tony prep school, the film centers on Timothy (Tanner Cohen), a barely-closeted day student with the singing voice of an angel. Bullied in dodgeball and tolerated by his blue-collar mother (Judy McLane), Timothy pines for the school's king jock, Jonathan (Nathaniel David Becker), drifting into Busby Berkeley-style daydreams in which the two act out their love.

But soft - what plot device through yonder window breaks? The school's drama teacher (Wendy Robie), an enchantress of sorts herself, casts Timothy as Puck in an all-male version of "Midsummer Night's Dream," and in studying his lines he deciphers a hidden recipe for love-juice, just like the one in the Shakespeare play. No sooner has he wielded his passion flower (it's purple and it spurts) on the eyes of his classmates, then each falls for the first person he sees. Soon the entire rugby team is paired off, the coach has declared his love for the principal, and Timothy and Jonathan are officially an item.

What keeps "Were the World Mine" from soaring into the delirious forbidden zone to which it aspires isn't the filming, which is low-budget and clumsy but fully felt, especially in the musical numbers. The culprits, instead, are the script (the dialogue comes in two flavors: Shakespeare and halting), the characters (gay or straight, they're all two-dimensional) and the performances. The soap actress Jill Larson plays the principal's snooty wife as a strident homophobic cartoon; when someone who has survived two decades of "One Life to Live" can't breathe life into her lines, you know a film is in trouble.

Hollywood royalty alert: Robin Williams's daughter, Zelda Williams, plays the hero's best friend, an alt-guitarist type, and she's one of the few people here who seems visibly comfortable in front of a camera. Cohen does too, but only when he sings. A headlong fantasy of gay teen openness and independent filmmaking, "Were the World Mine" requires serious indulgence. You're forgiven if you choose to indulge it, though. Like the man said, "If we offend, it is with our good will."

Ty Burr can be reached at tburr@globe.com. For more on movies, go to boston.com/ movienation.