Were the World Mine.

"The least one could ask of a wish-fulfillment fantasy film is a little buoyancy and breeziness," writes Michael Koresky at indieWIRE. "Yet for all its good-natured intentions, Tom Gustafson's Were the World Mine, in which a put-upon small-town gay teen converts his hopelessly straight town (including his corn-fed jock crush) to the pink team with the help of a magical, squirting purple pansy, is a mostly leaden affair, suffering as it does from a lack of realization and clarity."

"The filmmakers flirt with preciousness, but their often thrilling flights of creative fancy hinge on creating an insular vibe that's very much in keeping with that of [A Midsummer Night's Dream]," writes Ed Gonzalez in Slant. "And though they seem to overstate the prejudices of the people around Timothy (even his mother at one point gripes about needing to come out of her own closet), the film understands itself as a fantasy of escape that, like Shakespeare's lush artwork, hopes to both rouse the senses and one's conscience."

"Beneath a trite imagining of what would happen if raging homophobes suddenly turned gay (most, apparently, would become mincing stereotypes), the film articulates some age-old but still pressing truths about bigotry (Prop 8, hello), social justice, and romantic longing," writes Ernest Hardy in the Voice. "When the film narrows its focus from big questions addressed through overly broad strokes and instead zooms in on one-on-one interactions and the emotional power of a well-made musical sequence, it taps into a winning sweetness and poignancy."

"This small, endearing film... has already won a number of awards, including outstanding narrative feature at Outfest, the Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival," notes Stephen Holden in the New York Times. "In its giddiness, Were the World Mine echoes High School Musical 3 right down to featuring balletic choreography on a basketball court.... Like its Disney counterparts, it operates on the assumption that the movie musical is a world unto itself in which ordinary rules of logic don't apply. One thing doesn't have to lead to another, and not everything need be explained. Movie-musical magic makes up the difference."

Posted by dwhudson at November 21, 2008 8:35 AM