The Big Gay Musical (2009)

Although ultimately well intentioned, the film depicts a rather depressing image of what it means to be gay. If the film is to be believed, being gay means a life filled with religious-based bigotry, disease, a de-humanizing dating scene, low self-esteem, rejection from family and obsession with the body.As a gay man living in a big city and working in the theatre, I can tell you that there's more to gay life than that. There are gay people in happy long-term monogamous relationships. Most gay people I know are involved with community activism and have rich, rewarding lives.I belong to a gay Christian church, and I know that God loves everyone and that anti-gay bigotry is not consistent with Christ's ministry.As a film, "The Big Gay Musical" is passable entertainment. The acting, writing, directing and music are average.

The short "small straight play" intro with Michael Musto was so fresh and funny that I was really excited to see the Big Gay Musical that followed. Unfortunately, the Big Gay Musical was even worse than the small straight play: a lot stupider, a lot more irritating, and a whole lot longer. Within about five minutes I felt just like Musto, except what I wanted to scream was, "Bring back Michael Musto and the small straight play!"While the small straight play was cleverly dumb, the Big Gay Musical was just dumb, grossly overblown, and so strident, shrill and heavy-handed in its anti-God anti-Bible theme that it almost made me want to turn on Pat Robertson just to clear my palate. Hatred is hatred, and I'm sorry, but gays hating Christians is no better than Christians hating gays. I am happily gay and I love musicals and I love gay movies in principle, but this one promised a lot and delivered just a sour taste in my mouth. If it was supposed to be lighthearted satire, it failed miserably.The off-stage story was better than the on-stage musical, which is why I gave the movie three stars instead of one. If the Big Musical had not been so heavily, excessively obnoxious, I might have liked the Gay Movie that went along with it.

Superficial and stereotypical. No substance of any kind. Not up to date with the times. As someone else wrote. Move along. The musical numbers should never long and boring, especially in something billing itself a musical. Not what people want to see these days. When the acting is so-so, not the storyline indeed nothing can hold interest. Stereo types be it southern accents or whatever ... and such cannot save what could have been a worthwhile venture. If it had only sought to distinguish itself in some way that modern audience could relate to. That's not to say there is not a small niche audience. There clearly could be an audience for a collection of show tunes done by unknown or little known artists. But this would be quite small. Those expecting something truly 'big' will be disappointed? Too much emphasis on bodies and hook-ups moves any movie away from something to be taken seriously and into just an excuse to show these things. That is never a good thing to project to the serious movie going public. In a musical, singing and dancing should be first rate, the story should be engaging and if in fact it is based on cliché, at least it could be original in scope and context, not the same tired venues and story lines that someone would expect from similar projects 20 years ago. If you are looking for a musical that is significant to life in the 2000s, then you may better off looking elsewhere.

So, I've noticed that some people try to put this movie-musical down and I really can't understand. I consider myself very knowledgeable of musical theatre (with my embarrassingly large collection of over 200 different cast albums) and this is certainly not bad! It's on par with something like Reefer Madness.The songs are campy. They were meant to be. They do pay homage, and parody existing theatre pieces, and they do it well. The singers are good, if over processed which bothered me. But if you wanted big production numbers, my question is, "why?" They're in a tiny off- Broadway theatre. Of course the songs are smaller numbers. If the "show" made it to Broadway for real, the songs would be re-orchestrated, and changed to make them huge. The acting is spot on. The characters that are supposed to be shallow are just that! And though some people would say that this paints a bad picture of gays, well... gays in the theatre are very often incredibly shallow. But there is depth of character in the important roles. And the actors are very honest in their approach. It's quite nice. Of course, they all play a bit over the top when they're 'on stage'. And let's be honest, they're acting in an off-Broadway show, so they would so be over the top.Overall, this was incredibly entertaining. I laughed, and even got emotional at the end when the Tammi Faye character sang one hell of a show stopping number. I am going to make all my friends watch this! And if I could get this on Broadway, I would!!!