Metacritic reviews

He led a fascinating, complicated, often contradictory life, and Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed does it justice.

While the documentary doesn’t break much new ground, Kijak generally finds the right balance between the salacious elements and Hollywood nostalgia that remain inextricably intertwined in Hudson’s story.

Perhaps most surprising is that the portrait it presents is not of a tortured soul but of a man, and actor, who was comfortable in all the roles he inhabited.

The engaging HBO documentary Rock Hudson: All That Heaven Allowed, both a guilty pleasure and meaningful slice of queer history, delivers a loving yet irony-laced tribute to a closeted movie icon whose tragic death from AIDS changed the course of the epidemic and cemented his place in LGBTQ lore.

The blend of the salacious with the historical will get audiences to watch HBO’s Hudson doc, though it might not have enough meat to it to get TCM snobs to find anything new. But what’s there is a sensitive story of a man whose best self was known to only a few.

It’s best to look at All That Heaven Allowed less as a Rock doc and more as a chronicle of Hollywood’s system of subterfuge and suggestion, all built around protecting and/or punishing those who preferred the company of their own sex.

It is in part biographical, with the young-hunk-makes-good tale of the film world and a parade of clips from the movies that he made. But the documentary’s main concern is Hudson as the ultimate closeted homosexual, the CinemaScope version of a tale gay men had been forced to live out for generations, or risk scandal, blackmail and even criminal prosecution.

Kijak's film can remind a new generation that, despite seemingly insurmountable difficulties, some of our queer forebears could find a little slice of happiness, despite living in a world that told them they were not welcome.

In the end, with only Hudson to deal with, Kijak gets the big picture.

Stephen Kijak’s documentary does him a disservice, reducing Hudson’s career — in exactly the way he went so far out of his way to avoid — to the dimension of his sexuality.