TrueJoshNight
Truly Dreadful Film
Brainsbell
The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.
Lela
The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.
donwc1996
The reviews here have been uniformly negative and in some cases even nasty and although I would like to understand all the negativity I really cannot. I thoroughly enjoyed this film because the male lead really had me going and frankly I did not give a hoot how many holes there were in the script and there were plenty because I just could not stop looking at this guy he's that incredible. The story, let's face it, is far-fetched but hey it's the movies folks and we don't go to the movies to watch everyday life - we want to see something new and different and this film stretches the point almost to the breaking, but even still it works for me because I just could not take my eyes off the male lead. Even the ending which most here found absurd worked for me because it showed exactly what happens when a straight guy thinks he has been screwed by a gay guy and this is just what the straight guy here thought - and in fact he had - not literally but mentally and that was just as bad.
jm10701
Wow. Previous reviews almost dissuaded me from doing it, but I am very, very glad I watched this movie. (What I am about to write may contain >>SPOILERS<<, but I am simply responding to what other reviewers have already written.)My reaction to this movie is almost exactly the opposite of most other reviewers. I think it got much BETTER at the end, not worse; I think Steve John Shepherd is the weakest actor in the cast, not the best (although it is an extraordinary cast, so he is still very good); I think the responses of his parents (who do NOT brutally reject him (his father SAYS they still love him), they only insist that he leave them alone for a while to deal with the shock) and Theo (David started the violence, not Theo; and David is much bigger and stronger, so using a weapon makes sense) are entirely credible and honest under the circumstances, not at all monstrous or inappropriate; and Hannah had seen the TV show, so her appearance at the end is not at all out of the blue.The end is strong and very, very positive: David knows himself better than we do, so when he says it is the best day of his life, I believe him. This is a brilliant movie.(By the way, I am delightedly and militantly gay, and I abhor gay bashing, but there was NONE of it in this movie! As I said, David hit Theo first, Theo hit him back twice with the pipe - and NEVER in the head, so he was not trying to kill him - and what Theo said to David at the end he said because he was deeply hurt and terrified, not because he hates gays.(Theo is a sweet, sensitive, weak and wimpy guy who had loved and depended on David since they were children, and his world had just been blown to bits on national TV. Give him a break! David is stronger than he is, in every way. It is GOOD, not bad, to see a movie with a strong gay lead! That he can get beat up, alienate his family and only friend, and still say it is the best day of his life is great! This guy is a hero, not a victim.)
Jon Ward
Don't expect to feel comfortable or be warmed by a Hollywood ending.Do expect a well-acted fable about the dangers of falling in love with your best friend and how pursuing that love and destroy your friendship. 'How do you tell someone you love them?' 'Just tell them and hope they believe you.' The added closet homosexual existence of one of the friends, and relationship with his family, makes matters more complex.You are pretty much left to make your own conclusions from the ending. I will be watching this movie again.Also there are some novel south of the Thames (London) locations.
synergistic
Note: contains spoiler.... 'Forgive and Forget' is on balance, more forgettable than forgivable. Made for Scottish Television (and a boring, Scot version of a BBC drama) by a married female director from a screenplay by a hetero male film student and starring a hetero actor (get a clue here!), the story goes on interminably about how a working class Brit is hopelessly in the closet and jealous of his best mate's live-in girlfriend, whom he's out to undercut by exploiting her paranoia and dislike of his male camaraderie with her boyfriend. It's the British version of a Jerry Springer mentality in the working class subculture which leads, inexorably, to a disastrous coming out on a true-confessions-type TV show called (would you believe) 'Forgive and Forget.' What's sad is that our hero is so naive (and hopelessly inarticulate) that he thinks coming out to his romantic interest on TV will somehow produce a happy ending. No way, Jose. Hetero Sex Object wields a lead pipe and almost kills the guy before girlfriend, appearing miraculously just in time to stop him from murder, leads hetero heartthrob off stage (and, we imagine, to a 'happily ever after'). By this point, since she's already dumped him, she's almost a deus ex machina, and her appearance has no motivation except to save male heterosexuality from life imprisonment (where, no doubt, he would be forced to become some macho guy's 'sex object'). Sorry, but I really didn't like the 'film' (shot on video, no less), including the videography, which was brightly lit and boringly, competently uninteresting. Next time, I'll think twice about believing the hype (here's a clue: the video retailer--whose blurb rating the film I didn't question--is also the film's distributor) and give a movie the old eyeball before showing it to my friends. If you want a far better, and yet more gritty story of coming out in a British working class context, try 'Beautiful Thing'.
