User reviews

A sweet little holiday movie about gay men finding family among themselves. Three stories that eventually interconnect at a New Year's Eve party. It is only 1 hour 15 minutes long, so it is a quick watch. It is a gay movie with a happy ending, as it should be for fans of holiday movies.

Shared Rooms (2016)

Is a no angst gay rom-com written and directed by Rob Williams who brought us 'Make the Yuletide Gay'

This is another "Holigay" film that's intended to be light entertainment and it succeeds on that level. The story involves 4 gay couples with their stories told in an intertwining manner only to have them all close the loop; Couple 1 are an accountant and a screenwriter who open the film lamenting (over a Christmas dinner?) to couple 4 about the way that their social circle is shrinking as their gay friends are getting married and switching from partying to parenting. Of course couple 4 reveals that they are in the surrogacy process and expecting a baby themselves soon.

Couple 2 involves two men who are meeting on Christmas day for the first time thanks to a "manhunter" (Grindr/Tindr?) date. They discover that not only do they have sexual chemistry but quite a few other things in common as well.

Couple 3 involves two roommates who've shared digs for over a year with one traveling extensively. The traveler returns unexpectedly to find that his flatmate has turned his bedroom into a gay B&B and his room is actually rented out. Of course the two end up sharing the other bedroom and both discover... While couple 4's story isn't really developed, we actually get a fifth couple when the teen aged nephew of one of the guys in couple 1 gets thrown out of his own home and comes to lodge with his Guncle.

The stories all come together at a "Steve Not Eve" New Year's party.

The acting is genuinely not bad, the actors are good looking if not strikingly handsome, the production values are adequate, and whilst there are unlikely plot developments, there are few of the cringe-worthy moments that kept me from ever really enjoying the director's earlier 'Make the Yuletide Gay'

At only 75 minutes this film requires little time, and since it's streaming free with Amazon Prime, little investment. This is not an epiphany generating film with tremendous amounts of fiber and food for thought of the greater issues, but it is a candy cane of a movie. Light and sweet and perfect for the holidays.

Movies are supposed to be a wholesome diversion. For me, this was just that. It was on the pleasant side. I needed that.

Story 1: a gay couple without a child.

Story 2: a gay man has company over.

Story 3: a roommate needs a place to sleep.

That is less revealing than the Hulu description.

I can aspire to all three stories. There is humor in the movie.

Sure, I can put my movie reviewer credentials on, but I will not. I hope to meet nice men like the ones in this movie and that is the meaning this movie gives to my heart.

Obvious, many critics are fair about this film , comfortable for humor and for not bad acting , provocative for a so familiar theme in different context. A seductive Christmas film, presenting three couples, their relations and plans and feelings and intimacy moments. Nothing real memorable but enough for a relative good film , supperficial story and good looking actors.

Very nice film. Great for a romantic date by the fire with a glass of wine and a man in your arms. Most of the cast was great, the plot was ok, the production was cheap but good. There are three, interconnected, stories, not all being believable enough. It leaves you with a bitter sweet taste because the ending was rushed but at the same time you feel that it didn't have anything else to say. Maybe if the three stories were more developed or maybe if we knew what happens next. I don't know, it was just like a fairly good first episode of a tv series where you are forced to wait for next week's?

This is from director Rob Williams who brought us 'Make the Yuletide gay' – which I quite enjoyed on the superficial level that it was designed to be. 'Shared Room's similarly a bit one dimensional in the scenes it sets up an the depth of those that inhabit said scenes. There are three related stories of gay men and the sex they have during the festive season according to the blurb.

That is correct but is mis represents the lack of depth that happens here. There is one character who actually does really well and that is probably because his role has some space to grow and that is the long lost nephew of Cal's that turns up after being thrown out. Some of the themes could have been expanded and more could have been made of the 'awkward' moments that were often that so contrived.

What would have saved this is a dose of good acting and/or a better script, and in places both do come together, but it is so rare, this is like an ebb and flow of 'interesting' and as such so does the viewers fervour to watch more. Not a disaster but not one you will ever rave about either.

This seems to be funded by indiegogo, as the imdb page lists all the supporters. We meet singles and couples in various stages of hooking up, couple-dom, family-hood, at the holidays. Some male nudity. Some fun conversations, catty remarks. Several timely references which will probably be obsolete in a few years. But it's mostly fun to watch. It chugs right along. Then there is one really, odd, rare revalation made about an hour in; and immediately after that, a coincidence, where the odds against that happening are just crazy sky high. Everything (too much!) happens in the last fifteen minutes, and it's weird and rushed. Written and directed by rob williams. It's a fun premise, but there's just too many weird things going on to buy in, and the ending is just crazy rushed. Did they run out of money?

The chemistry between the actors ties this film together and leads to fluid dialogue, which felt like it was delivered quite naturally. The cast seemed to have been chosen deliberately.

While I laughed a lot in this movie, I left the theater feeling connected, in some way, to each of the characters. There were quite a few one-liners, which didn't seem forced. At times, the plot seemed like it could spin off into a television series.

Despite the lightheartedness, there was always a string, or maybe lots of strings, of emotional struggle woven in the narrative, which grounded the film and makes it relevant.

Possibly if this had been produced twenty years ago it might have been deemed mindlessly amusing, but considering what's available in the way of movies and TV these days, it was just mindlessly tired and banal.

The script is just a series of lame, tired word play and pathetic situations augmented by a cast of hesitant, not particularly likable, actors struggling to portray one- dimensional characters.

I don't want to beat this to death, but if you manage to sit through it all from beginning to end, you'd have to be a masochist. I'm not so I didn't. I tried fast forwarding a few times in the hopes that the pace might improve and the actors might become less wooden, but that just compounded my disappointment.

I did watch Rob Williams' Make the Yuletide Gay a few years ago. The situations were fairly lame and ridiculous in that as well, but the actors were likable, fairly talented and able to rescue the awkward plot. That magic element was sadly missing in Shared Rooms.

I'm not one to normally leave reviews but after watching this film i felt compelled to. I've watched so many quote an quote LGBTQ+ movies but so many of them fail to give their characters real lives and struggles. Opting to instead lay on overused and outdated stereotypes. NOT THIS, Each character has a life and a story behind them. They felt like they actually had a life outside of what we see in the film. I don't want to give away much but I definitely recommend this movie. Even it it's not around the holidays, you should give it a watch.

This movie is so boring, so amateurish in every respect, such an insult to its audience that one can't believe it ever got made in the first place. The director's previous effort ' Make the Yuletide Gay' at least had a certain naive charm , with a decent story-line and charming actors, so my expectations for this film were reasonable. But from the opening scene this low-budget shocker had 'epic fail' screaming out from the screen. There's nothing attractive about it. The acting is farcical, the story lines laughable and the claustrophobic sets an obvious sign of a very limited budget. This sort of rubbish 'Gay' cinema is an insult to any audience, especially Gays. If this is considered an acceptable standard for 'Gay themed cinema' than we are doomed. The final party scene is so incredibly lame, with such a ridiculous and predictable denouement, the only lasting impression one has is that you've just lost eighty minutes of your Life you'll never get back. Joyless, humorless and just embarrassing, 'Shared Rooms' shouldn't be shared with anyone. Awful.

Some of the actors were very good- some were ok- just like any film- _ a little bit 2 much thrown in so that there wasn't 1 vignette/story that seemed 2 get the depth and screen time it deserved- so U feel mildly elated at the generic happy endings- there was enough story here 2 make it a short series- 2 more fully tell the individual stories_ = there is some good comedy- mostly from uncle cal and oslo and from the accountant..__and there was a true Christmas miracle reunion at the end of the movie- so that's good_ there aren't that many enjoyable HoliGay movies- so watch this 1

It's hard to believe that gay movies this bad are still getting made, more than a decade after Brokeback Mountain. When you can tell within the first five minutes how flat the acting is, it's bad. When the music over the opening credits is so noticeably low-budget that you fear you've just made a terrible mistake, it's bad. When even the prodigious amount of male nudity is barely enough to hold your attention, it's bad.

I tried to forgive the acting because the script is so awful - Armie Hammer and Timothy Chalamet couldn't have made this dialogue work. Add in story lines that are utterly predictable and/or have been explored far better in literally dozens of other gay-themed movies, and you've got a gigantic mess. The only line that actually made me laugh was when one of the characters quoted "Mommie Dearest" - "I'm not mad at you, I'm mad at the dirt". Well I'm mad that I wasted an hour and a half of my life watching this.

This was a really bad movie with a terrible script and really poor acting! The dialog was so stilted and fake that it was at the level of some kind of high school production. Everything about it showed it to be very amateurish and low budget! Just a waste of time!

I've read all the user reviews here. I don't understand the negative ones. This is one of the best gay-themed movies I've seen. I think the script was imaginative. There's a lot of "synchronicities" between characters, interesting twists and turns. It's well-acted. The actors are nice to look at. There's full-frontal nudity. It has a great ending. I mean, what's not to like?!

Shared Rooms

This was so overly contrived and sickly sweet it was difficult to watch and not squirm in one's seat. Some of the acting was good, but the photographer, I forget his name, barely kept it together.

The sentiments covered were wholesome and it normalised so much that gay men have fought for over the years and it was very progressive. Of course no one worked, cleaned, did the laundry or dealt with the daily grind and yet everything was perfect in every house.

On a shallow level I enjoyed it but it was instantly forgettable, at best it's a 5 outta 10, it could have been great but it just wasn't.

This movie is great compared to many gay-themed movies with typical tragic endings. Sid, played by Justin Xavier, is literally the perfect husband. His romance scenes were incredible for the obvious reasons. The rating on this movie is too low. Were there some shallow moments and some wooden acting? Sure, but this movie is much better than I expected it to be considering gay cinema is typically depressing. Brokeback Mountain is the best example. The gay nephew storyline is very realistic and added to the drama. You should definitely give this movie a chance. It won't win any awards but enough character development was present to push this movie above six stars.