A Character Study Without Character... Development That Is

Rating: 1/10 (22 May 2009)

Milk is nothing more than a character study. It focuses exclusively on the life of Harvey Milk, the first openly-gay politician in the United States. Unfortunately, Sean Penn portrays Milk as a one-dimensional caricature akin to a SNL sketch. So, if Milk offers us nothing more than a character study, and there isn't any character to study, I am inclined to believe that the film is about nothing.
Sure, there are some social criticisms mentioned. But they are generic and almost literally spelled out for the audience (ex. "Be yourself").
Despite these fatal criticisms of the main performance and script, the Academy honored both with an Oscar.