The DVD cover describes the film as follows:
“Secret Men’s Business explores the relationships and issues of four school-friends reunited after the death of a beloved school teacher. During a weekend of sun, surf, girls, wives and late night reminiscing, the friends begin to deal with certain truths which have been ignored for some time. As relationships and issues are explored, the friends face their own personal challenges amidst a contempt borne out of familiarity. Secret Men’s Business is an honest portrayal of relationships, life, love ... and dishonesty”.

The film doesn’t have a strong story or plotline, and I agree with Jude that its pretty weak in places. It doesn’t attempt to provide any answers, leaving all sorts of issues not fully explained or resolved. But I think in many ways the plot is incidental, because it’s really more of an observational film, a view of different personalities and they way they communicate and behave both at an individual level and as a group.

Viewed in this light, I think the film works very well, with good performances and interesting insight into how a group of men behave when they're together - I felt that this aspect of the film was particularly well observed.

But it’s fair to say that it’s not a film that will suit everyone’s taste - it really comes down to whether or not you enjoy this type of ‘slice of life’ film. And whether you can forgive the weaknesses and enjoy the aspects of the film that are done well.

I see I was wrong about the film getting an award and it was for Simon's acting - that's slightly better although
I do think that little was required of him - the one scene where he had a heart to heart is the only thing I can think of that might've drawn attention to his acting ability.

I didn't enjoy the performance of Ben Mendehlson (Doug Petersen) and that probably coloured my opinion. And I really did hate the monotonous music.

The best music either enhances the experience - Jaws for instance - or blends in so well it's not noticed.

Has anyone ever done a film completely without music?

I don't really like watching stuff on the computer because I feel as though I'm too close to it, but that's probably just me that's a bit weird

And your point Fran, about the music being more intrusive on YouTube may very well be correct. One of my favourite programmmes is Frasier and I sometimes watch a few clips - the audience laughter is very intrusive on the clips - I wonder why that is?

Anyway back to SMB. I was thinking last night about whether my dislike of the film was simply a personal ambivalence to the genre. I certainly haven't seen many films like it but I think that Ordinary People is
comparable. A father, mother and brother who all deal with the death of the eldest son in different ways.

Ordinary People obviously had a much bigger budget and won several Oscars so it wouldn't be fair to compare many aspects of the two films but I realised something. As with SMB, not an awful lot happens, the whole point of the film is to observe the three characters dealing with their grief and interacting with each other.

What made Ordinary People a satisfying watch (for me) was that there was a more obvious journey for the characters - and an ending that reflected that journey.

In SMB the journey was less obvious to me - certainly I didn't feel that I knew any more about Simon's character at the end of the film than I had known at the beginning. At the end the characters simply went their separate ways and I was left wondering what had been the point.

(You know the real problem though, LOL, not enough Simon!!)