What's left is the outline of a story, filled in with long, silent passages in which the actors roam about the grounds of their appointed country house, as though they were delighted to be free of the stage at last. The movie suffers from its sketchiness. The play had its heavy-handed moments of speechifying, but its dry humor soaked up the soggy spots. Without the naturalistic ebb and flow of conversation, McNally's observations about AIDS and promiscuity seem overemphasized, as if speeches alone were the story's raison d' tre. The characters are weaker for the abridgment as well.
Bright moments do remain.
But there's a telling line in the play that's missing from the movie. Certainly the source material has the seeds of an interesting movie. Robert Altman , who has made several dynamic and faithful filmed plays, could've done wonders with the characters' constant asides to the audience, a conceit that's mostly absent from the film until its effective, climactic dance scene. Nashville Scene . Info Booth .