I didn't find the writing for this cable TV version of a much performed play that only lasted a short time on Broadway to be very convincing although certain elements were more obviously based on things people thought and kept to themselves rather than bluntly blurt out to people they insist they love. Conversations between the openly gay Brendan Fraser and his parents, Gary Marshall and Faye Dunaway, are like one person's nightmare of how conversations with parents uncomfortable about sexual orientation could go, especially with his father.
Marshall out of the blue changes his feelings on how he felt terribly guilty over not being able to console his college age son over a breakup with another man, then blurring out how he found the whole subject disgusting, and all of a sudden offering him money not to leave. Dunaway, acting as if she'd watched Anne Bancroft over and over in "Torch Song Trilogy", is melodramatic and cliched, hypocritical when she denies that she would ever consider aborting him if she knew he would be gay.
That's the issue for Fraser's sister, Jennifer Beals, who is told by her doctor that her unborn son might be gay. Jon Tenney as Beals' husband, is completely unreasonable and far too one dimensional, and the writing for the character didn't even make an effort to give him any shading. A complete disappointment even though I stuck with it to see how it would unfold, and the ending (different than the play) seemed quite forced and cowardly. The opera audition sequences and Fraser's interractions with his gay colleagues were irritating, a straight person's view of what gay men are all like, turning them into the court jester, quite an aggravating stereotype. Really accomplished nothing showing where good intentions usually end up.
Marshall out of the blue changes his feelings on how he felt terribly guilty over not being able to console his college age son over a breakup with another man, then blurring out how he found the whole subject disgusting, and all of a sudden offering him money not to leave. Dunaway, acting as if she'd watched Anne Bancroft over and over in "Torch Song Trilogy", is melodramatic and cliched, hypocritical when she denies that she would ever consider aborting him if she knew he would be gay.
That's the issue for Fraser's sister, Jennifer Beals, who is told by her doctor that her unborn son might be gay. Jon Tenney as Beals' husband, is completely unreasonable and far too one dimensional, and the writing for the character didn't even make an effort to give him any shading. A complete disappointment even though I stuck with it to see how it would unfold, and the ending (different than the play) seemed quite forced and cowardly. The opera audition sequences and Fraser's interractions with his gay colleagues were irritating, a straight person's view of what gay men are all like, turning them into the court jester, quite an aggravating stereotype. Really accomplished nothing showing where good intentions usually end up.