Certainly, taking a nostalgic look back at the West Hollywood of the early 1980's is fascinating, and while I would live there a few years after this was made, it seems far too exaggerated for a major gay community and far too close to what Warner Brothers had tried and failed with two years before with the New York gay community with "Cruising". Both films deal with alleged serial killers within the gay community, "Cruising" dealing with the leather scene, and "Partners" dealing with nude models and hustlers. I found some humor in this film that cast Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt as cops who pretend to be gay lovers to track down the killer, but it quickly runs out of steam and relies on old stereotypes that are just stupid, if not completely offensive at least to me.
Shots of the old drag nightclub "La Cage Aux Folles", Carney's Hamburger choo choo restaurant on Sunset Boulevard and various side streets off of Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood shows how physically little has changed. I've certainly met characters like the gay hotel manager and the aging landlord (Jay Robinson) and the various younger gay men they encounter in their travels and certainly have been to my share of house parties like the one O'Neal walks in on. But no matter how hard O'Neal tries gay male drag, he just doesn't pull it off and gives a truly dull performance.
Hurt seems rather lost in some, playing a rather frigid gay man, obviously uncomfortable with his homosexuality, and for such a great actor, it seems that he is pretty much just phoning it in. It is interesting however to see him in the scene with Jay Robinson who played Caligula in the 1953 epic "The Robe" and its follow up "Demetrius and the Gladiators", while Hurt became legendary for his performance as Caligula in the BBC miniseries "I Claudius". Giving the insinuation that Hurt is trying to really become O'Neal's "wife" just makes the characters seem cloying and certainly not cop like.
Other than the pink tracksuit and Volkswagen bug that Hurt is forced to wear and the stereotypical leather and disco queen outfit. O'Neal flits around in, there really isn't anything that I considered controversial or blatantly stereotypical. Other than a few minor characters with high pitched screechy voices (one of them with huge muscles), there isn't really anyone among the major cast that plays a cliche. I'll give the screenwriters credit that they do try to instill O'Neal's masculine character with some compassion and make him not a complete homophobe, but mixing the film with comedy, drama and mystery and not convincingly, it comes out to be a film with many moods. In addition, the climax is lacking any real heart, and the impact of it is lessened as a result of a lack of interest in who really was the guilty party.
Shots of the old drag nightclub "La Cage Aux Folles", Carney's Hamburger choo choo restaurant on Sunset Boulevard and various side streets off of Santa Monica Boulevard in West Hollywood shows how physically little has changed. I've certainly met characters like the gay hotel manager and the aging landlord (Jay Robinson) and the various younger gay men they encounter in their travels and certainly have been to my share of house parties like the one O'Neal walks in on. But no matter how hard O'Neal tries gay male drag, he just doesn't pull it off and gives a truly dull performance.
Hurt seems rather lost in some, playing a rather frigid gay man, obviously uncomfortable with his homosexuality, and for such a great actor, it seems that he is pretty much just phoning it in. It is interesting however to see him in the scene with Jay Robinson who played Caligula in the 1953 epic "The Robe" and its follow up "Demetrius and the Gladiators", while Hurt became legendary for his performance as Caligula in the BBC miniseries "I Claudius". Giving the insinuation that Hurt is trying to really become O'Neal's "wife" just makes the characters seem cloying and certainly not cop like.
Other than the pink tracksuit and Volkswagen bug that Hurt is forced to wear and the stereotypical leather and disco queen outfit. O'Neal flits around in, there really isn't anything that I considered controversial or blatantly stereotypical. Other than a few minor characters with high pitched screechy voices (one of them with huge muscles), there isn't really anyone among the major cast that plays a cliche. I'll give the screenwriters credit that they do try to instill O'Neal's masculine character with some compassion and make him not a complete homophobe, but mixing the film with comedy, drama and mystery and not convincingly, it comes out to be a film with many moods. In addition, the climax is lacking any real heart, and the impact of it is lessened as a result of a lack of interest in who really was the guilty party.