Consenting Adult

Sometimes We Think That TV does not deliver anything better than The Real Cinema Theater Plays but with this film The director showed a good story, well done , good acting and most of all very well structured with many topics that were ahead to that edge in the middle of the 1980's Decade! It was about Love, Forgiving, Redemption, and Accepting! I enjoyed this movie, specially for focusing in discuss if Homosexuality was an illness or just a natural expression of sexual orientation! Good for the Director!

I saw this movie back in 1985 when it premiered on television. Marlo Thomas plays Tess Lynd a mother whose son announces that he is gay. Tess' husband is not accepting of the son and a battle ensues. Tess is torn between the love of her son and her husband. Marlo Thomas gives a great performance!! I was a bit shocked though, parts of this film are pretty risque for the time and television! I can remember vividly how the viewer almost was part of the sexual activity the son was having, but it was done tastefully. I recommend this film!

As a gay teenager coming up when this movie came on for the first time it actually made the idea of coming out a bit easier! This movie though it only mentioned AIDS once was very well made and everything was done in good taste! I think the caste was superb with such heavy weights as Martin Sheen and Marlo Thomas and at that time Barry Tubb was a relative newcomer and the perfect choice to play Jeff he is a good looking actor and he helped prove that anyone can be gay and that it is not a sickness but a way of life! I wish someone would buy the rights to this movie and put it on Video or DVD. We need more movies like this that parents can watch with their gay children so that the coming out process will be easier on both!

Movie-of-the-week about a gay young man who comes out to his parents. Martin Sheen plays the father--frustrated, embarrassed and angry--who turns his son away, but mom Marlo Thomas reaches out to her boy with love and understanding. TV not tackling taboo territory, but taking baby steps (still); it's about as sexually frank as the glossy coming-out opus "Making Love" from 1982 (and with just a whiff of a mention of "that disease" that dare not speak its name). Writer John McGreevey, adapting Laura Z. Hobson's novel, keeps shifting the narrative back to the parents--ostensibly because Sheen and Thomas are the movie's stars. Naturally, the straight-laced couple would be shocked and confused by their son's revelation (that's only natural), but just whose story is this?

I saw this film when it came out on TV. I was thoroughly impressed with the way this subject was handled. Marlo should be very proud of her work. I was 26 when I saw this and think this is a film all young people should see when considering coming out to their parents.