Our Son

I wondered, with only 1s and 10s ratings, what was going to be this movie like. This spoiled me the very first part as I was looking for some strong point of views one way or another. In fact, there is nothing controversial, it's just a nice indy movie.

Acting is quite good, characters are played well enough to get involved in the story and even choose a side.

The story was not really predictable, my friend guessed one end, and I guessed another one. So just don't trust too much those too angry or too excited reviews.

About the story, it was interesting, after all those legal battles on gay marriage and surrogacy, how a judge, how families, would behave. An inevitable subject 10 or 15 years later, now in 2023.

While I didnt feel much connection between Billy and Luke (purposeful?), I resonated and reverberated with the pulse of this story. With some friends going thru similar struggles recently I saw an adept struggle between to people who are faced with one of life's most challenging struggles: divorce/child care.

The movie doesn't really beat a totally compelling rhythm while we drift along with the two actors - but their journies feel real, honest, and painful.

A solid drama. I cried (not buckets, but tears).

The boy gang was a tad cliche (but what do I know I dont have a boy gang). Oh and a cameo or two from some wonderful legends.

Luke is my favorite actor and I am happy to see that he is now doing more gay movies as he has been in and out of closet earlier in his career.

I was waiting with anticipation for the movie to come out for about 3 months. When it came out and I started watching it, i quickly realized it is not going to be an Oscar-worthy drama and adjusted my expectations.

With these adjusted expectations, I liked the movie. I do not follow the negative reviews (3.9 stars when i'm writing this). I think it is a solid 6 stars movie with an average plot. I have seen much worse movies with much higher rating. For gay people, they usually shoot movies that don't happen to have any plot what-so-ever or are unrealistically over-the-top (Fire Island, Summoning Sylvia, Now Apocalypse) or they are about royals (Red, White and Royal Blue, The Favourite, Young Royals, etc).

This movie is average and I actually liked that aspect. It portrays gay couple going through the motion as any other straight couple and that they have day-to-day problems like anybody else. Usually, when i wanna see a movie like that, I have to go to Asian gay cinema (Thailand or Korean boy love movies/series) and I am really getting tired of reading subtitles all the time. It was refreshing to have a movie like that made in America.

Plus, i was really surprised to see both Kate Burton and Phylicia Rashad. I am a huge fan of both and it was really lovely to see them both in this movie. <3.

I enjoyed the film. Halfway through I started thinking "where have I seen this before " ? It suddenly occurred to me that it was Kramer vs Kramer from decades ago. This film still hit every emotion. It is definitely worth watching. Billy Porter was amazing! The relationship dynamics were a little bit obvious and then stopped short of any real revelation. I would have liked to have seen a bit more interaction between "daddy" , "poppa" and the child after the separation was decided. I did enjoy the interaction with the friend group during the brunch scene. It was a pretty honest discussion between characters.

Bill Oliver's OUR SON is a fine drama, telling the story of a gay couple whose marriage comes to an end, and their subsequent custody battle over the young son whom they fathered via IVF.

In a time when homosexuality is still illegal in some areas of the world, and there is still a large percentage of those in the West who oppose gay marriage and view the LBGTQ community as "other," what Oliver (and his co-writer, Peter Nickowitz) present to the audience is that gay people are simply regular folks, who go through the same day-to-day trials and tribulations as the hetero world does. If anything, OUR SON has far more in common with films like KRAMER VS. KRAMER than something like BOYS IN THE BAND. And it is that population who refuse to see the gay community as human beings just as they are who will benefit most from seeing this film.

Luke Evans is excellent in the lead, managing to paint a complex portrait of a man who is a driven professional, but who also loves his husband and son deeply, but who perhaps comes to that realization too late. Billy Porter gives an equally fine turn as the estranged spouse, who has found that fatherhood awakened something inside of him that he wasn't aware of previously. The rest of the supporting cast is excellent, with nary a false note among them.

There are no heroes or villains in this film, just regular people trying to cope with the same roadblocks that life seems to throw in our path randomly. Highly recommended.