Movie Review: Milk

:A: and I went to see Milk with my mom today. It was only playing at The Charles, so we went to Baltimore and had lunch at The Yabba Pot beforehand. We got to the movie a few minutes before it started and settled in to watch.

To say I was unimpressed would be an understatement. I was bored. I did not like this movie at all. Somehow Sean Penn managed to portray a charismatic, passionate man as uninspiring and devoid of strong emotions, and the film overall managed to take a time that was filled with radical change and turn it into a shadow of a social movement. There was absolutely nothing interesting about the movie Milk. I walked away with the impression that Harvey would be rolling in his grave if he knew about this tragedy, and that it did his memory a disservice to make such a boring movie about him. I didn’t find it educational in the slightest, although my mom points out that I am well-versed in gay history, and others may have indeed learned something from the film.

I didn’t like it. There were no bright spots for me to highlight. I know it got decent reviews, and I know Sean Penn was nominated for a Golden Globe award. But I found his performance limp and uninteresting, and the movie as a whole was quite yawn-inducing. There wasn’t a minute of passion or excitement during the whole thing, nothing at all to get swept up in. If somebody wants to learn about him, they would do much better to read The Mayor of Castro Street or watch the 1984 documentary The Times of Harvey Milk.

Interesting links:

• Advocate cover story: What if Milk hadn’t been murdered?
• Commentary on Sean Penn’s involvement with the gay community
• Other articles about Harvey and the movie from the Advocate
• Metro Weekly had a review, they weren’t too fond of it either
• The Washington Blade thought the acting was good but not the story here