April's Shower

My review is motivated by what appears to be some negative over analysis of a delightful little film. As they say, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar."

I found this film very easy to follow. Intended or not, this film has a decided message. We are all people, human beings with prejudices, frailties, strengths, weaknesses, wisdom, or not. Through it all, Doolin shows us we all have the ability to understand, if we want to, and the ability to change. Change our thinking, our perceptions, and how we choose to handle life's little curves.

To accomplish this, Doolin uses stereotypes. Images and ideologies we have all seen, witnessed or felt. We have quite a few somewhat colorful and interesting, if not fun characters in this film, covering a good part of the questions and attitudes we usually see in society. The conservative religious elitist, liberals, gay and lesbian, all juxtaposed against a canvas of a wedding shower, which unexpectedly reveals greater issues beneath the surface.

Doolin handles such deftly,and considering the issues discussed, same sex marriage & gay relationships,some rather heavy issues, she gets her point across with humor and a lightness which makes it easy to appreciate.

Doolin makes no preachy commentary of the subject matter;l She exposes the issue of gay relationships, sex and loving a person of the same sex for what it is. All of us want to feel close to another, and want to be loved. How it manifests, and comes to be, is only as it is. (and) as it is, is really no big deal. All the fuss, a lot to do about nothing.

Trish Doolin is a very talented writer/directer/actor. if you are secure enough in your own self, and don't mind watching a comedy with gay subject matter, you may find this film quite enjoyable.

My parting advice to other critics, Don't over think it. It's really pretty simple.

This movie tells an amusing if somewhat muddled story, and the acting really is pretty bad -- compared to the usual slick Hollywood stuff. But let's face it, lesbian-oriented films seem to range from low-mediocre to atrocious, so put in the context of the existing art, April's Shower starts to seem a lot better than low-end.

I don't think there was a single polished actor in the bunch. They all over-dramatized or used fakey facial expressions or just plain got things wrong at times.

There were so many relationship twists and flip-flop couplings/decouplings of lesbians and heteros and bisexuals alike that I found myself a bit confused at the end, but I did have fun watching all the mating dances unfold. Be prepared for some plot turns that seem precipitous; either the author left out bits of bridging text here and there or too many scenes ended up on the cutting room floor.

If you want to watch this one, try a little experiment: Pretend you are at an amateur production of a play, perhaps put on by your local junior college. It does make the performances feel a lot more plausible.

This is the most AMAZING movie eVER! As a lesbian, who has watch a LOT of gay movies. This is the best one yet. Great ending, great characters e honestly? It's funny. It's chaotic. It's PERFECT.

Pleasantly surprised! I thought this was going to be another soggy, predictable, boring lesbian coming out and romance movie. This movie was poignant and hilarious, with many plot twists and memorable lines. It was not entirely light-hearted. One of the characters is the mother of a baby who has died, for example. Including this subplot sent the message that even someone who has suffered such a tragedy is still an ordinary person who is part of life and able to experience laughter and love. The love story at the center of the film was passionate, imperfect and deep. Above all, the movie was polymorphously sexy. One particularly charming quality that this movie possesses is the portrayal of romantic love between two people in the midst of a loving community of friends, all of whom are having their own struggles of the heart. It hit the some of the same postmodern romantic lesbian comedy notes as "Kissing Jessica Stein." I appreciated the fact that many of the characters were clearly meant to be Italian-American (this was evident to me even before they were "outed" as Italian in the film), with references to Catholicism and pizza and construction without descending into flat stereotypes, kind of like the way Jessica Stein's Jewishness was treated in that movie. Lizzie-20 needs to lighten up and look up "camp" in the dictionary.

Nothing really spectacular and memorable about this comedy. The number of different characters that get thrown at the viewer once the movie starts is remarkable. Too bad that during the movie the character numbers just keep piling up and it gets quite confusing who's who and what the relationship dynamics of each character are. Some of the characters don't really get explored at all so, I guess, they are in the movie for comedic purposes, but they don't play that role very well, which in turn spoils the movie somehow. There are some okay jokes here and there, but most of them feel plain.

The same can be said about the acting - decent performances are mixed with poor ones and the result is nothing special.