When the film Stonewall opened debuted at Toronto Film Festival on Sept. 15, there was a protest taking place. It was organized by Abuzar Chaudhary, a trans woman of color who thought director Roland Emmerich’s handling of the biopic was technically bad, a soundstaged catastrophe and a gross misrepresentation of a pivotal moment in GLBT history.
The problem for Chaudhary and many others is that Emmerich has a blond-haired, blue eyed white teenager throwing the first brick that began what became the gays march to emancipation. In reality that part belongs in history to several transgender females of color, genderqueer boys, drag queens, butch dykes and sissy men present in front of the Stonewall Inn. And nary a blond in sight
That Emmerich thinks this is acceptable makes him ignorant or—in no uncertain terms—an as*hole, according to Huffington Post editorial director Noah Michelson.
The audience lined up to see the first unspooling of the film disagreed and told the protestors to “kill themselves.”
What a mess Stonewall has become, having opened nationally a week ago, to dismal reviews and even worse attendance. It would appear to have less to do with the audiences apathy for the gay movement as their instinctive rebellion against bad filmmaking.
Not to rub salt into any wounds, we present some pull quotes from various reviews around the country that illustrate just had bad a film Stonewall actually is. Read on.
- “As well-intentioned misfires go, it’s difficult to imagine as disastrous a dud as Stonewall, an earnest dramatization of real-life events that winds up being as lamentably flat-footed as it is inexcusably inauthentic. … It’s a shame that the beginning of a movement that has come so far, so fast has been reduced to a trite, calculatingly manipulative reenactment.” —Ann Hornaday, The Washington Post
- “In a way, Stonewall is proof that the gay community has fully made the transition to the mainstream. It’s now subject to the kind of Hollywood nonsense that was previously reserved for heterosexuals.” —Calvin Wilson, St. Louis Post-Dispatch
- “Stonewall is perhaps even worse than some feared it would be — more offensive, more white-washed, even more hackishly made. It’s so bad that it’s hard to know where to begin a catalogue of the film’s sins. … Aside from its offensiveness, Stonewall is, plain and simple, a terribly made movie.” —Richard Lawson, Vanity Fair
- “I think we need to file Emmerich’s Stonewall – a well-intentioned, profoundly silly and borderline insulting movie — under the category of Yeah That Happened or perhaps God Reminding Us We Are Idiots, and then forget it as soon as possible. Remember the Steve Jobs biopic starring Ashton Kutcher? Remember the Jimi Hendrix biopic with no actual Jimi Hendrix songs? No, you don’t, not really – and Stonewall will soon be consigned to that same oblivion.” —Andrew O’Hehir, Salon
- “Emmerich seems eluded by the subject matter, despite obvious personal investment. The result appears to be haphazardly quilted from cut pieces; even the centerpiece riot — where Emmerich gets to exercise his yen for destroying iconic locations — is truncated.” —Ignatiy Vishnevetsky, A.V. Club
- “Stonewall is so generally sludgy that you can’t imagine it appealing to anyone, gay, straight or otherwise. The characters don’t resonate, so their day-to-day problems don’t really strike a chord, either. Nor does the film ever establish a strong sense of time (anachronisms abound, starting with the haircuts) or place (this Greenwich Village always feels more like the set it is than like a location). —Alonso Duralde, The Wrap
- “Roland Emmerich’s seriously misjudged Stonewall turns the transgender drag queens who helped change America into dress extras in what’s basically a Big Apple retelling of The Wizard of Oz revolving around a Caucasian gay man’s coming of age. … Emmerich — a hugely successful director of disaster movies who happens to be gay — deserves credit for trying to call attention to the plight of gay homeless youth in this self-financed, if seriously flawed, labor of love. But with thinly drawn characters, uneven performances and tin-eared dialogue, Stonewall plays at best like a musical without the songs.” — Lou Lumenick, New York Post
- “While the director’s distinct style helps mask some of the cheap sets, Stonewall’s ham-fisted dialogue, inconsistent tone and one-note characters undermine what little substance there is. Hopefully, the same historical event will get the adaptation it deserves in a future project made by somebody else.”—Max Nicholson, ign.com
