Noutions
Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .
Nayan Gough
A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.
Janis
One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.
moonspinner55
Gay male couple in Los Angeles deals with tragedy: one partner has full-blown AIDS, and his estranged mother from Arkansas is called for; soon, the boys' mothers meet for the first time and couldn't be more dissimilar. Big-hearted TV movie made at the time 108,731 Americans had perished from AIDS, so it's realistic in this setting that everyone here would be struggling with the notion of the disease and with homosexuality in general. Julie Andrews is the wealthy, society-type who lives in a sparkling abode; Ann-Margret plays the bewigged cowgirl who's had a wild life of ups and downs. Dramatically, it might have been more interesting if the two actresses had switched roles--they're a little bit typecast--but it's a comfortable, secure match, and both women are shown to good advantage. Not so Hugh Grant as Andrews' son, looking a bit distanced from the proceedings. A small-budgeted but emotional film, dignified and even-keeled, and though Ann-Margret's character is anti-gay and refers to her son as "one of them", the movie attempts to show personal growth and is ultimately compassionate.
richard.fuller1
ONe moment in this film I have never seen in any attempt to deal with gay rejection or homophobia on the part of two mothers, Ann-Margaret and Julie Andrews, whose sons are lovers and Margaret's son is now dying of AIDS. Ann is finally brought around and goes to be reunited with her dying son. At one moment in the film, she is in the kitchen with Andrews and Hugh Grant, who is Andrews son, and she is chittering away happily about being reunited again with her kid. She states casually how she hopes to take him back to Arkansas with her when everything settles down. Grant shoots Andrews a look of startlement, then blurts out, "absolutely not! He is too ill to travel!"Surprised, Ann-Margaret says, "oh no, I didn't mean before, . . . . I meant, . . . . I meant after, . . . " meaning after he had died, she would take his body back to Arkansas. She then dismissed the idea, seeing it had upset someone. This has never been depicted before or since that one who could dislike a child who is dying of AIDS could take responsibility of them after they have departed. A real slap in the face to those who think homophobia should always be condemned.
shrine-2
No matter what a man might have done to bring himself to an AIDS-ridden state, at the very least, he's entitled to two things: a fond farewell among his loved ones, and a proper burial. Few could have played out these sentiments more simply and rivetingly than in "Our Sons." Even in the bright San Diego sunlight, there is a pall of melancholy that hangs over everything in this movie--a ghost of yearning for tenderness and tolerance. It's an elegy that plunges through sharp differences of opinions, and, unlike most great homages, finishes with a sweet, somber sigh. I cannot remember when I've been moved so strongly by a TV movie. Julie Andrews stars as a businesswoman whose homosexual son, exhausted by the ordeal, reveals that his lover is dying AIDS. They have drifted apart, because although it had never been expressed, she is deeply disappointed with the situation, and harbors a faint hope that he might change. Under the mistaken notion that the best thing for his lover is to reunite him with his own mother, he asks her to travel to Arkansas to make a personal appeal. The problem is what separates this Mother and Son is not a tacit agreement to quietly disagree, but out-and-out rejection and gut-wrenching revulsion. The war breaks out between the two mothers as they wrestle with their strong feelings about their sons.Julie Andrews has never been known for playing mothers. Her clipped diction and stilted manner made her a more fitting nanny or governess, I think, than a living, breathing, nurturing bearer of children. It's these qualities that make her right to play Audrey Grant who has distanced herself from her son, because she doesn't want to admit that she hates what has happened. Andrews has never looked more radiant than she does here. It's as if the blood has finally started coursing through her veins. She looks recognizably human, and she has never seemed smarter than she does here.Ann-Margret doesn't seem any fitter to play a mother than Andrews, but she has always been known for her ferocity. Witness her going at John Forsythe in "Kitten With A Whip" or her eyes flash at a cockfight in "The Cincinnati Kid," and you'll know what I mean. But the abuses the women she played could heap upon the men in their lives, her Luanne Barnes can't quite get away with with another woman. She and Andrews go at it tooth-and-nail, and what comes of it are their most powerful performances ever.As Luanne's son Donnie, Zeljko Ivanek is the humiliation every parent fears, the skeleton most fathers and mothers want to stay in the closet, the jack-in-the-box they'd just as soon lost its spring. Donnie knows how his mother feels about him, and he wrestles with the prospect of a painful reunion as bravely as a dying man can. Writer William Hanley has blessed him with a love of movie dialogue and a take-things-as-they-come buoyancy. Ivanek knows what to do with a part this good. He flies with it, and he never comes down. With him playing Donnie, you can understand how he could attract someone who looks like Hugh Grant (who plays Audrey's son James as if he had a terminal case of lockjaw) and who could make a mother like Luanne Barnes see what a waste her rage and rejection was.John Erman, who also directed another good AIDS picture "An Early Frost," is an intelligent director; he knows when he has something good in front of him and when to get out of the way. The moral of the story may be a bit simplistic for some people's taste: that if we don't love our children, who will? But I think this movie stands alone on the subject of AIDS; it's the most powerful movie about it I've ever seen.
cLoNe
It's not the best AIDS or gay drama around, but it's good. The cast is great and the script, while being imperfect, has very good moments.The four main characters are well developed and their conflict with each other are very interesting.A very nice TV movie, but still- a TV movie. Nothing more than that.
