"The Weekend" is awful. I haven't a good word to say about it.
The plot is contrived and both the acting and the dialogue are wooden and uninteresting.
The movie is an adaptation of a book by Peter Cameron . Brian Skeet directed The Weekend and should not be allowed to make any more movies!
Here's a brief plot summary. Warning: Spoilers!
Tony (D.B. Sweeney) dies of AIDS while living with his brother,John, and sister- in-law, Marian (Jared Harris and Deborah Kara Unger), in their country home. One year later John and Marion invite Tony's former lover, Lyle (David Conrad), to visit their home on the first anniversary of Tony's death. Lyle surprises them by showing up with his current lover, Robert (James Duval). Surprised? Confused? I was totally confused.
Would you take your current lover to a memorial weekend for your former lover who died of AIDS? What was Lyle thinking when he invited his current lover, David, to accompany him? Perhaps he thought that it would be "cool" to eulogize Tony and then go upstairs with David and assuage his sadness with mutual oral sex? Were the screen writers, Cameron and Skeet, trying for new records in grossness and weirdness?
What was truly weird was that neither of the hosts, neither Marion nor John, seem surprised by the appearance of Lyle's new lover. They just took it in stride and remained nonplussed. All this happened at the beginning of the movie. From here the movie actually got worse as unbelievable as that may sound.
Next, the movie shifts to a neighbor's palatial house where the women get into eye-gouging and being super-bitches. The owner of the house is a 60ish women named Laura Ponti (Gina Rowlands) who has a surprise visit by her actress daughter Nina (Brooke Shields). Laura has been divorced 4 times and, Nina, the daughter, is an actress in grade B movies who shows up for the weekend with her married boy friend, Thierry (Gary Dourdan), who is supposed to be French. Dourdan disappoints with a sometimes-you-hear-it-sometimes- you-don't French accent.
Nina's whole objective is to aggravate her mother in any and all ways possible. For example, she and Thierry have passionate sex in the swimming pool while her mother watches. Then Nina banishes Thierry from the movie when she hears him talking with his wife. Neither Rowlands nor Shields nor Dourdan contribute anything to the movie. At this point I didn't think things could get worse. I was wrong.
Lyle, Tony's ex-lover, feels guilt at having started a new relationship after Tony's death and his guilt leads to a physical fight with David, his new lover. The result is that David leaves for Italy to restore Gina Rolands' frescoes in her Italian villa while Lyle goes back to the city. Did I say the plot was contrived?
The movie makes use of flashbacks to fill in the background. In one particularly weird flashback Marion and Tony lie on the pier after swimming. The water is cold and Marion's nipples are poking up like little soldiers and then Tony the gay brother-in-law and Marion are kissing passionately! Was he the father of Marion's baby notwithstanding his AIDS?
Tony's death is not shown. If the TV documentaries are accurate then dying from AIDS is a terrible ordeal. The body whithers away with more and more diseases attacking it. In "The Weekend" Tony's suffering is absent. There is also no mention of who infected him. Instead, there is a maudlin flashback where Tony and Lyle express their undying love for each other. It made me want to puke.
I'm not a great fan of movies about gays although there is one that I would recommend, even highly recommend. I'm referring to "Flawless" with Phillip Seymor Hoffman. See it!
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WATCHING "THE WEEKEND"!
The plot is contrived and both the acting and the dialogue are wooden and uninteresting.
The movie is an adaptation of a book by Peter Cameron . Brian Skeet directed The Weekend and should not be allowed to make any more movies!
Here's a brief plot summary. Warning: Spoilers!
Tony (D.B. Sweeney) dies of AIDS while living with his brother,John, and sister- in-law, Marian (Jared Harris and Deborah Kara Unger), in their country home. One year later John and Marion invite Tony's former lover, Lyle (David Conrad), to visit their home on the first anniversary of Tony's death. Lyle surprises them by showing up with his current lover, Robert (James Duval). Surprised? Confused? I was totally confused.
Would you take your current lover to a memorial weekend for your former lover who died of AIDS? What was Lyle thinking when he invited his current lover, David, to accompany him? Perhaps he thought that it would be "cool" to eulogize Tony and then go upstairs with David and assuage his sadness with mutual oral sex? Were the screen writers, Cameron and Skeet, trying for new records in grossness and weirdness?
What was truly weird was that neither of the hosts, neither Marion nor John, seem surprised by the appearance of Lyle's new lover. They just took it in stride and remained nonplussed. All this happened at the beginning of the movie. From here the movie actually got worse as unbelievable as that may sound.
Next, the movie shifts to a neighbor's palatial house where the women get into eye-gouging and being super-bitches. The owner of the house is a 60ish women named Laura Ponti (Gina Rowlands) who has a surprise visit by her actress daughter Nina (Brooke Shields). Laura has been divorced 4 times and, Nina, the daughter, is an actress in grade B movies who shows up for the weekend with her married boy friend, Thierry (Gary Dourdan), who is supposed to be French. Dourdan disappoints with a sometimes-you-hear-it-sometimes- you-don't French accent.
Nina's whole objective is to aggravate her mother in any and all ways possible. For example, she and Thierry have passionate sex in the swimming pool while her mother watches. Then Nina banishes Thierry from the movie when she hears him talking with his wife. Neither Rowlands nor Shields nor Dourdan contribute anything to the movie. At this point I didn't think things could get worse. I was wrong.
Lyle, Tony's ex-lover, feels guilt at having started a new relationship after Tony's death and his guilt leads to a physical fight with David, his new lover. The result is that David leaves for Italy to restore Gina Rolands' frescoes in her Italian villa while Lyle goes back to the city. Did I say the plot was contrived?
The movie makes use of flashbacks to fill in the background. In one particularly weird flashback Marion and Tony lie on the pier after swimming. The water is cold and Marion's nipples are poking up like little soldiers and then Tony the gay brother-in-law and Marion are kissing passionately! Was he the father of Marion's baby notwithstanding his AIDS?
Tony's death is not shown. If the TV documentaries are accurate then dying from AIDS is a terrible ordeal. The body whithers away with more and more diseases attacking it. In "The Weekend" Tony's suffering is absent. There is also no mention of who infected him. Instead, there is a maudlin flashback where Tony and Lyle express their undying love for each other. It made me want to puke.
I'm not a great fan of movies about gays although there is one that I would recommend, even highly recommend. I'm referring to "Flawless" with Phillip Seymor Hoffman. See it!
DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME WATCHING "THE WEEKEND"!