The Big Gay Musical

It was very average I felt. Nothing was that good. I got bored watching this at one point. The singing was well done. I like the idea of were the story was trying to go but didn't think it did it very well. The acting was good for what the people were given. I don't recommend you watch this unless you are super bored and nothing else is on.

Call me cliché, call me gay, call me what you like, but I quite enjoyed this movie. Contrary to other reviews I read before deciding to give this film a chance, I was pleasantly surprised by 'The Big Gay Musical.' Having seen many movies with a gay theme - many of which I will never miss seeing again - I was happy to spend several hours of my precious free time on this one.

I though the casting choices were very good, and the quality of the acting was commendable. The reality is that for someone looking in from outside the gay culture there is a tendency to focus on key plot points of the story line - call them cliché - and review them negatively. Unfortunately this only underlines a lack of understanding, and misses the important messages of the sub-plots to the people for whom this movie has ultimately been made.

The Broadway style vocals and musical styling were a true reflection of what I would expect from a modern off-Broadway musical. Although there were variations in the appeal of the featured music, there were several songs and performers which were inspiring. The love song delivered by Michael Schiffman's character Charles was uplifting, as was Liz McCartney's performance of "As I Am."

All in all it's an entertaining story about that old gay cliché about musicals. The use of numerous gay clichés throughout the storyline was amusing, and sometimes thought provoking.

I don't believe this is the type of film intended to communicate deep philosophical messages about the gay world. It's a film that's supposed to challenge your beliefs about gay stereotypes and profiling whilst also making you feel good about yourself. And it did.

Superficial and stereotypical. No substance of any kind. Not up to date with the times. As someone else wrote. Move along. The musical numbers should never long and boring, especially in something billing itself a musical. Not what people want to see these days. When the acting is so-so, not the storyline indeed nothing can hold interest. Stereo types be it southern accents or whatever ... and such cannot save what could have been a worthwhile venture. If it had only sought to distinguish itself in some way that modern audience could relate to. That's not to say there is not a small niche audience. There clearly could be an audience for a collection of show tunes done by unknown or little known artists. But this would be quite small. Those expecting something truly 'big' will be disappointed? Too much emphasis on bodies and hook-ups moves any movie away from something to be taken seriously and into just an excuse to show these things. That is never a good thing to project to the serious movie going public. In a musical, singing and dancing should be first rate, the story should be engaging and if in fact it is based on cliché, at least it could be original in scope and context, not the same tired venues and story lines that someone would expect from similar projects 20 years ago. If you are looking for a musical that is significant to life in the 2000s, then you may better off looking elsewhere.

The short "small straight play" intro with Michael Musto was so fresh and funny that I was really excited to see the Big Gay Musical that followed. Unfortunately, the Big Gay Musical was even worse than the small straight play: a lot stupider, a lot more irritating, and a whole lot longer. Within about five minutes I felt just like Musto, except what I wanted to scream was, "Bring back Michael Musto and the small straight play!"

While the small straight play was cleverly dumb, the Big Gay Musical was just dumb, grossly overblown, and so strident, shrill and heavy-handed in its anti-God anti-Bible theme that it almost made me want to turn on Pat Robertson just to clear my palate. Hatred is hatred, and I'm sorry, but gays hating Christians is no better than Christians hating gays. I am happily gay and I love musicals and I love gay movies in principle, but this one promised a lot and delivered just a sour taste in my mouth. If it was supposed to be lighthearted satire, it failed miserably.

The off-stage story was better than the on-stage musical, which is why I gave the movie three stars instead of one. If the Big Musical had not been so heavily, excessively obnoxious, I might have liked the Gay Movie that went along with it.

This movie is superficial in every way possible. Characters completely undeveloped. Story non existent. As for the script, it's possible to hear more meaningful dialog between two drunks after 2:00am in the most looser laden gay dive than in this shallow attempt at a musical. Speaking of music, it's terrible in this "musical". It begins and ends as a meaningless parade of gay stereotypes and cliché plot points: Cue the promiscuous sex, AIDS panic, and familial redemption.

A few unsuccessful shots are taken at religion but with nothing more than over done makeup and southern accents they just fall flat. There's a lot of skin and sex between guys, which for porn might be enough but for a feature length "film" seems a little out of place since there is basically no established characters with any depth or a plot line with any interesting detours. It's possible to tell this story in a meaningful way and even put it too song. But this movie falls flat in every possible way, bad script, bad music, bad acting, and wistful Broadway type vocals. It's actually difficult to comment on this movie because it's barely worth the effort. Bottom line, when a movie doesn't give you any reason to care about anything or anyone in it then there's, nothing to see here. Move along...