Jeffrey Details

[Highly rated reviewer]

outdated and ...

American stage conventions don't translate well into film and equally they don't translate well into the more cynical and perhaps sophisticated views on this side of the pond.

This film (about as sophisticated as your common-or-garden blunt instrument), despite its theatrical origins, is terrifically well-meaning, but a) it is now out-dated, and b) it displays some truly toe-curlingly embarrassing situations and acting. It fails to convince on pretty much every level, partly because things have moved on from the period it depicts.

(That's what you write when you're trying to be generous.)

Not really worth the time -- any more, at least.

Gay men are not all like this!

An interesting film which depicts gay men in a very sterotypical manner. Obviously, when you're gay you have to be terribly camp, work out in very tight muscle shirts, and be into musical numbers. (Well that last bit is probably true!) Having said this, 'Jeffrey' is entertaining, socially appropriate (AIDS message coming across loud and clear!) and clever in it's use of 'talking to the audience' monologues. One of my favourite bits has to be when the two guys kiss at the gym and the film cuts to a scene of two straight couples watching the film in a cinema. The two guys make faces and 'yuck' noises, while the girls turn to each other and say 'Aah'! Patrick Stewart is excellent in his very non-Captain Picard role of a camp interior designer. Seeing him mince around in a central New York park dressed as a 'Pink Panther' is hilarious. Sigourney Weaver also does a very funny cameo as a motivational speaker. Not the best film I've ever seen and very obviously written in the 80's, but not a bad attempt at re-selling HIV and a story about gay love in a difficult world.