The Making Love of the 21st Century

Rating: 4/10 (27 March 2006)

I'm willing to lay cash on BROKEBACK MOUNTAIN being regarded as the MAKING LOVE of its day in a decade or twos time. Just like that Harry Hamlin turkey, it may be an important historical landmark but it's really not much of a film. It's not even especially daring, going out of its way not to offend the prejudices of the potential straight ticketbuyers. There's definitely nothing to frighten the horses here.
What you get is a rather laboured and overlong Hallmark TV movie instead. Tasteful, distant and lacking in passion but professionally made, it's hard to see what all the fuss is about from a European view. I suspect that people in the USA are embracing it like a banner without noticing the shonky stitching, using its box-office success to affirm their identity in a time when their government holds them in contempt. If so, any film would have done just as well, even Oliver Stone's much more daring Alexander, which did a lot more to break gay stereotypes than this does.
The way that any criticism of the film is met with cries of homophobia is worryingly symptomatic of a wider insecurity that has nothing to do with the film's strengths or weaknesses. And there are a LOT of weaknesses here. Some bad performances from Heath mumblemumblemumble Ledger and Randy show-me-the-money Quaid, a hopeless copycat score, direction that plays more like disinterest than sensitivity and a script that goes on hitting the same two points over the head forever chief offenders. Worse is some of the dialogue, that sounds like it was lifted straight from a Jeff Stryker prison porno. I almost expected to hear the immortal "I'm not gay" "You are now" exchange that's such a mainstay of gay porn!!!
Not a turkey, but more TVM than Trojan Horse. Come back, Andy Warhol, all is forgiven.