You Are My Sunshine

This could be an amazing indie film if there were less annoying music, shorter dialogues, a bit more between the flashbacks and present times.

Above all, it could have a bit more effort with a low budget, but 2 hours with so many clichés is a bit too much.

Two young men meet in 1970s, when the love that dare not speak its name was still a bit of a whisper in the dark. They form a lifelong relationship, despite the sad and painful estrangement from the family of one of the gents that results.

The film uses flashbacks to tell the story. Despite some corny lines and just a couple of clunker performances, the film is pretty good. The story is strong, and most of the acting is very good. Steve Salt, who plays one of the young men is an excellent actor, and very sensitive to the role. Jack Knight, playing the other young man is a bit lackluster. Charles O'Neill puts in a very nice performance as the nephew who tries to re-knit the family relationships.

The struggle to live their lives and be happy together leaves the young men stranded and isolated from family. They overcome it, having each other, but one of the men is haunted by the rift.

Where the film really suffers is from the casting of the older counterparts.

One has to really suspend reality when skipping back and forth between the two eras in their lives. Particularly considering what an interesting and amazing face Steve Salt has, it's quite a stretch to even figure out which of the older guys is who. It's a distraction from the story to see the older men in the present.

But the story is sensitive and moving. Worth the effort, even if you sit in astonishment of the characters and wonder how those actors ended up being cast in theire respective roles.

This was done extremely well.

Everything. The story, directing, acting, cinematography etc.

I don't give a nine rating often, if ever.

Maybe "The Godfather" is a 9.7 - This is an 8.7 - I rounded up

Tearful, heartfelt and emotional.

A must watch from any age or sexual preference. A human story that just moved me.

So to start off with, I think most of the acting in this movie was excellent, and the cinematography was quite good. Also, the actor playing the nephew is really hot, so it was enjoyable whenever he was on screen.

The problem here was mostly the writing. It's overwrought, it's too on-the-nose, and it's just bad. I was expecting a sweet love story over time, and instead it's mostly a story about an elderly gay man's relationship with his sister, who embodies every stereotype of a homophobe. There's no nuance in any scene, and she doesn't go through any believable transformation. Scenes which should have been deeply emotional were made almost comical by their lack of subtlety.

Most problematic is that we never really see the main couple fall in love. We have a few scenes of them in their youth, spread out over years, and they're nice, but sparse and limited. The actors make you believe their feelings, but we don't get to see how they developed.

There are also numerous sound problems. Most glaring is the sound editing. In some jumps between shots in the same scene, the sound dramatically changes, as if there was nothing done to smooth the transition between a boom-mic and voice-over, but aside from that, the score is not good. Music sometimes drowns out the scene, and like the writing it tends to be overwrought.

This is a story that could have been really good if it had been handled with some subtlety, but the whole effort is too heavy-handed. As I've said, the acting is generally very good, and there are some genuinely moving moments, but overall it's not worth the time.

(Also, as at least one other reviewer has mentioned, the casting of the older actors isn't great. I don't really mind that too much, since finding someone to portray old Steve Salt without waiting for Steve Salt to get old would be hard, but the older actor looked nothing like him.)

I thought the story was a real good one. I really though Jack Knight played his part beautifully. I think he has a real talent for acting. He needs to be given more chances. The way he used his eyes and his facial expressions was really well done. This was clearly a difficult film to work on but I really thought he fully understood his character and was able to translate this to the big screen. He really has a wonderful screen presence and his ability to act as the shy boy with no friends I thought was excellent. He even managed to convey slight shift in confidence as the film progressed which I thought was very clever. Not too much and not too little. Very difficult to get the judgement right doing this but Jack nailed it. This guy needs to be in more films.