Really Surprised!

one of my absolute favorites!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

..but--sadly--we're still dealing with the same issues of hatred, bigotry and inequality more than 35 years after Stonewall.If more people from the so-called Christian right would/could see this movie (among others) with an open mind, maybe they would see that gays are not their enemies, or threats to their children, husbands, wives and marriages.Too bad that won't happen.BUT--maybe if Obama or Hillery become President in 2008...well, then, maybe those who are afraid of homos (and women and blacks) will finally come around and welcome us into this world.End of comment.

A young gay man from the sticks comes to New York City in 1969 hoping for a better life, but finds the homosexual lifestyle just as stifled in the big city under police pressure, corruption and harassment. The legendary gay riots near the Stonewall Inn take up just five minutes of the film's running-time, the final five minutes. This low-budget, brightly-colored film is more interested in the lives that would soon be affected by the riots than in the aftermath of the violence--and so we get stock characters like the naive blond cowboy, the underworld group controlling the club, the straight-seeming activists for a Homosexual Alliance, and lots and lots of drag queens. Director Nigel Finch seems to make a concerted effort to equate homosexuality with drag behavior, and drag behavior with (ultimately) prostitution. Perhaps this was true of the times, but Finch's presentation (though not campy) has cartoonish leanings and nostalgic overtures that don't express anything more than what most people already realize: the cops were corrupt, the gays were not saints, and they clashed. There's a good movie to be made about Stonewall, but this one just scratches the surface. There are some sweet moments (a sing-along on a bus, a dance between a drag queen and a gay conservative), but just as many scenes where the tone intended hasn't a hope in hell of coming through. ** from ****

It's a well-meant effort with a lot of heart behind it but far less by way of acting, writing and directing prowess. The leads are competent but flat and the direction is pretty standard issue (with the exception of the riot, which is quite badly staged and directed). The period pop songs, lip synched by the drag queens, grow tiresome after a while. I found the Duberman book powerful, passionate and engrossing as any novel - maybe someday someone will feel inspired to do a film adaptation right. All in all, this movie's a heroic effort but not a success.

I have a great deal of admiration for this engaging effort to explain the roots of the modern gay rights movement, produced on a shoe-string by a director with an admirable sense of style, pacing, and resourcefulness. Though filtered through a distinctly British class-consciousness, it does a highly respectable job of catching the main trends in gay America from my not-quite-misspent youth.Furthermore, it is candidly presented as a subjective, fictional account, mooting complaints like "the bus is too old," "no New York apartment is that big" and "the Stonewall bar never looked that clean."Nonetheless, one small detail and one large item are egregiously wrong. The detail is the rather elementary fact that the Stonewall was never licensed; it was a "private" mob-run club. It was raided not because all cops are homophobes but because, in the absence of official licensing, gay bars were, in every sense, illegal. The scenes where Stonewall employees display great care about the liquor laws are ridiculous, since the bar operated outside the law.The larger item is the failure to capture the sense of exhilaration that swept throught the country in 1969. This was the year men walked on the moon, the year of Woodstock, the year an X-rated gay-themed film ("Midnight Cowboy") won the "Best Picture" Oscar, and (biggest miracle of all to us New Yorkers) the year the Mets, long "lovable losers," won the World Series. Anything was possible, and gay people joined the party with enthusiasm.