The Boys In The Band

New to Netflix.

The Boys In The Band is Based on Matt Crowley’s stage play, directed by Joe Mantello and stars Jim Parsons and Zachary Quinto. Set in New York in 1968, we find a group of gay men brought together to celebrate a friends birthday. However an uninvited “straight” friend arrives and causes the evening to take an unexpected turn!

The challenge with putting stage plays onto screen is how do you stop them looking and feeling “stagey”, sometimes you can and sometimes, like this, you don’t pull it off, as I spent most of it It thinking “I could see why this would be good on stage”.

Another area that didn’t work was the characters “likeabilty”. While it’s not necessary to like a character to be engaged in a film, it is important that you find them interesting enough to want to spend time with. The problem with this group is while they are not meant to be the most endearing, as the party descends into an increasingly miserable and unpleasant affair the characters become increasingly less tolerable. Rather than wanting to continue to spend time at the party you want to run off into the distance and wonder how the guests put up with their hosts increasingly erratic, unpleasant and bullying behaviour.

The film is not without its positives, there are some particularly touching moments as the guests reflect on their loves past and present and there are performances to admire. Parsons is particularly good as party host Michael, cutting a frustrated, angry and unlikeable but interesting figure, Matt Bomer (Donald) and Robin de Jesus (Emory) also offer good support.

There is also a question about the films message, conversations in New York in 1968 are fine, but whether the discussions hold relevance in the 21st century is a question I’m probably not qualified to answer.

In the end this film misses more than it hits and while there are things in it to enjoy it didn’t translate well to screen and presented me a set of characters I’m in no rush to spend time with again.