Product: Jeffrey [VHS] (1995)
Rating: 3.0
Well intentioned, but too whiny
A gay man (Stephen Webber) swears off love because he is afraid of AIDS despite a powerful attraction to a man (Michael T. Weiss) he meets at his health club. "Jeffrey" started out as a play and it shows: characters make speeches directly to the camera and it is filled with generally amusing little vignettes that probably work well in a theater revue but don't build a cohesive film narrative. The characters seem to be delivering monologues to each other rather than having conversations.All of this can be overcome if the writing is good enough (as it often is), but the central character of Jeffrey is more problematic. He spends the whole movie running from relationships and inadvertently treating his would-be boyfriend rather shabbily, and I think we are meant to identify with him, but he is surrounded by much wiser, more emotionally healthy characters who implore him to do the right thing. As a result, I was just exasperated with Jeffrey's whiny self-centeredness and unconvinced by his conversion at the end. The entire cast does a great job. It's a hoot to see Patrick Stewart as a flamboyant gay man, but he doesn't just play it for laughs; his Sterling comes through as the most sharply defined personality in the film.