Reviews

I think overall the acting was excellent as the actors were for the most part believable as the characters they portrayed. The story line was a bit jerky and would have made more sense if the 'bad guy' (I use quotation marks deliberately because beyond being mean spirited we really have no idea if he was truly evil or simply seriously psychically damaged) would have explained his agenda rather than having someone else attribute it to him. I think the movie tackled too many issues (gay marriage, gay teens, intergenerational relationships, tokenism, teenage angst, and discrimination to name a few) and should have focused on what I think is the main theme: what happens when a man's good intentions are twisted by his detractors? It reminded me a lot of The Crucible only gayness and not witchcraft was the issue. The willingness of people to assume the worst because that is easier than checking "the facts" and a willingness to go along with the mob mentality because that to is easier.

Misleading description of movie as the crime is well known to those who committed it and everyone seems genuinely sorry so not sure what the point of the movie is. You only maim the ones you love? You will sleep with anyone and mess with anyone's emotions because it will drag out the movie? It will take an endless amount of time to drive from somewhere in upstate New York to Miami but only minutes to drive home? Disjointed vignettes of one man's search for absolution is how I would describe this movie. Too much happens for which there is no explanation and the explanations provided are in no way consistent with the whom the characters claim to be.

Omar Metwally does not come across as innocent but someone with an agenda who needs to appear innocent. I can buy him as a schemer looking for a way into these people's lives as what better way than to be a wide-eyed sycophant? But they would have to be extremely naive to buy him as such.

As individuals the other characters were brilliant but somehow they did not mesh together as a believable group. Too much unsaid and too many back stories untold (e.g. why did the deceased author take up with a woman other than his wife? why did the wife so willingly accept "the other woman" and her child into the household?) The ending hokey and contrived.

The cinematography was visually spelling binding.

Certainly not a rush and out and buy, or even rent for that matter, movie.

What was this about????? Too many characters running in too many different directions to follow and all held together with a rather weak premise. Lots of hints of drama but nothing developed.

Most of these guys cannot act and most likely were selected because they would act in this film.

I had no idea who the direction Thom what his name is is as I have never watched Queer As Folk but knew the film was in trouble when it was revealed he also wrote it and produced it (I do believe). A man is 30+ years old and never had a girlfriend and no one suspects he's gay? Who when he finally scores needs to discuss it with his trick?? Please. And anal retentive brother versus the drifter brother? Another cliché. The closeted gym bunny?!

Did anyone notice Brian brings an assortment of liquours but they only drink Glenfiddich and beer? Perhaps if I had been drinking Glenfiddich and beer I might have enjoyed this.

So the movie is about a time in the war as seen through the eyes of a child? Then why is he absent from key parts of the movie and why do we know so much he does not?

It appears the only thing that scares our 8-year-old are Nazis. He lies openly to his mother and shows disdain for his sister and tutor but fears men, including his father, when they are dressed as Nazis. Does the writer have some unresolved parent/child thing going on?

The family has some very contemporary dynamics going on it: a child who enters a room where his parents are fighting and without knocking first is reasoned with and not punished for doing so. According to authors such as Alice Miller in the 1940s Germany such a child would have been instantly and severely punished as would he would have been for repeatedly disobeying his parents.

In Auschwitz, at the height of the Final Solution, children were gassed when they arrived and not housed with their parents. In addition, are my partner and I the only ones who noticed Schmule is the only child in the camp? Also, the building the prisoners are working on never gets any further along in completion although we see them working on it through out the movie. Also, where are the guards who have been patrolling the perimeter?

The movie uses cheap tricks including misleading promos, melodramatic music and totally unrealistic situations (e.g. a child burrowing under a fence to get into a death camp) to heighten what could have extremely painful moments.

Redeeming qualities of the movie include excellent acting and some very nicely furnished houses.

...because it was too disjointed and it seemed it was building up some steam and then suddenly it stopped again or more exactly dragged to a stop. Not a lot happened and what did happen had limited explanations explanations. What were American and Irish children doing in Paris in the Second World War? Would the Nazi's have really gone out of their way to get two orphans? What's with Max Van Sydow and the gun in the barn? Why is the grandson's mother mentioned once and never again?

Gabriel Brynes' accent kept appearing and then disappearing. The actor who played him as a boy had no Irish accent at all.

Having said that I hasten to add the actors gave life and some consistently to an otherwise jerky story line. The scenery was amazing as well. They are the reason I watched it to the end and gave the movie a 10.

What the hell was this guy (the writer/director/actor) thinking? A gay man who likes to play with children in a park, in stores, and every where else he can? He is unable to maintain an adult relationship of any depth and becomes catatonic every time he is confronted with life?! And we wonder why the world thinks the queer community is full of pedophiles! I am gay but I am not a parent and I would think this man's behaviours indicate he is a pedophile. I know he would be no place near my nieces and nephews-ever. I kept thinking "Oh my God. Where I have heard this before? Oh, yes every time Michael Jackson is caught in bed with a child." No adult could that naive without something seriously being emotional wrong with them. I am so disappointed in TLA for having anything to do with this movie.

...but what a disappointment. The acting was superb. The cinematography was gorgeous. The stimulated sex, particularly the gay stuff, quite hot. However, the characters were totally unbelievable as everything was driven by plot line nothing by the characters. Surely to G-d this was not the first time Campbell Scott's character had stepped out on his wife so she must have known something was going on. He would have been clever enough to ensure she never found out. We are led to believe she is naive to the ways of the world and yet knows to how to find and hire a private detective and gather enough information to 'gaslight' another person so cleverly. This compassionate woman suddenly turns into a total freak? And the up and coming ('scuse the pun) screenwriter is supposed to be a man-of-the-world and yet believes his dead lover speaks to him in a computer chat room? The whole thing about the poisonous plants-gee, can you say "foreshadowing"? We rented the DVD and I left the room to do other things about half an hour before the end because I simply could not waste my time any longer.

It had great potential but unfortunately that was pretty much all it had. Kevin Kline is not a believable gum shoe or piano playing Humphrey Bogart or whoever he was supposed to be, bumbling or otherwise. Fart jokes can only go far-even 'South Park' does not rely on them as much as this movie does. The jilted lover story line had good potential but never went anywhere. Garrison Keillor and Meryl Streep as lovers? Probably every middle-aged man alive has imagined himself as her lover but Garrison Keillor?! Ugh. The little homilies got tedious rapidly. The angel of death is woman who died while listening to the show?! Why kill The Axeman? His corporation kills the show anyway. Lynsey Lohan's character's obsession with suicide?! I mean we all know she was only there to try to the kids to see this movie but at least they could have given her a believable story line. The singing, including the original songs, were superb.