Irishchatter
It really is a tearjerker when most of the men died from aids. This movie really does remind you of the great pretender Freddie Mercary who died from the disease. All of the guy actors were great including Mary-Louise Parker who was the only actress in this film to be hanging out with the lads. Man, when each men were dying especially the Sean character, it broke my heart that they were having dementia, becoming weak and never waking up. I never experienced someone who died of Aids in my life but seeing how Aids effects people, it just is so so sad and you feel really hopeless for not helping that person. Even typing this review my eyes are starting to water again.Brilliant movie, it is very sad but it shouldn't be unmissable, it is just blooming well done folks, 8/10!
Michael Neumann
The title is the newspaper obituary euphemism for a gay lover, and yet another discreet but frustrating reminder of how mainstream heterosexual society avoids confronting the AIDS epidemic. In an effort perhaps to offset public ignorance, Norman René's film of the same name almost resembles an AIDS awareness primer, dramatizing the deadly progress of the disease through the gay community since the summer of 1981, when 'safe sex' merely meant anything goes, but don't get caught. Like other American Playhouse productions the film is simple, unpretentious, and no less rewarding for being so straightforward. René and writer Craig Lucas have wisely resisted the temptation to make a 'Love Story'-style terminal illness melodrama, concentrating instead on the bittersweet pain and bravery of awkward hospital visitations and quiet deathbed encounters. Only the forced optimism of the final daydream rings false, unavoidably since the epidemic itself (still) has yet to be resolved by anything resembling a cure. The balance of the film is simply too honest to support such sentimental wish-fulfillment fantasies.
tempus1
It amazes me that so many people gush and rhapsodize over this movie. There have been enough good gay-themed movies (Parting Glances, To Forget Venice, My Beautiful Laundrette, Maurice, Alive and Kicking, to name only a few) in the past twenty-five years; by comparison, how is it that people are able to project all sorts of virtues and emotions onto a thin, tiresome, badly acted (save Bruce Davison) problem play which has no subject other than AIDS IS BAD?! The interminable Fire Island scenes are not only shallow, stereotypical, and embarrassing, both in script and execution, they are unwatchably dated. The 'characters'--if one could refer to one-dimensional, wooden, solipsistic, Yuppie brats as 'characters'--have no inner lives or any genuine concerns beyond dick, dunes, and dish, and the attempt to gin up emotion later in the movie, and to have the Yuppie fags suddenly develop 'consciences' and 'feeling', is utterly EMETIC. I use the word 'fags' advisedly; I am a gay man myself, and this rehash of the most unattractive and boring NYC/Fire Island stereotypes leaves no other appropriate word to describe it. Bruce Davison gives a good performance, very fine at the end; what a waste of a fine actor and his skill.
savichmike2001
Although topical, this movie is not dated in any way. Set in the late '80s and '90s, the film evinces timelessness in terms of dialog, music, style, set design, and costuming. In fact, the only thing that "dates" the movie is the absence of cell phones and flat-panel monitors. Unfortunately, the biggest miss is excluding larger social institutions and their reactionary background: the President, NIH, etc. But, perhaps, that is the point of the film: to keep the effects of the disease personal and gut-wrenching. Far better than "An Early Frost" and your typical made-for-TV, "disease-of-of-the-week" films. Truly great acting from a well-put together cast of believable and empathetic characters.
AD
