Watch Defying Gravity For Free

Why so much hype?

Pretty Good

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

I can't believe it's been almost 20 years since I saw this film (from a Super 16 print) in a dingy little San Francisco theater. It only played for a week and I went to see it again almost every night. No, it's not "Star Wars" but at that time gay cinema was dominated by depressing AIDS-related tragedies and horrible stereotypical gay caricatures. "Defying Gravity" was one of the first full length films to show us a fairly ordinary guy who just happens to like other guys. Candidly, I was always put off by the gay bashing plot point, but I'll cut the writer some slack for needing an strong dramatic element to move the characters from point A to B. Sadly, only a short time after this film was released the real life Matthew Shepard murder occurred. I know it's easy to find fault with these low budget affairs that have to be shot in two weeks with no rehearsal and no more than two takes. But if you know anything about film making, you really have to respect the entire cast and crew for pulling off anything remotely entertaining under these conditions. It's a shame Daniel Chilson didn't make any more films after this. He created a character that was immediately likable. I just saw a big budget gay film this weekend where I didn't care about any of the main characters, even after 90 minutes.

This is perhaps one of the worst gay movies I have ever seen. Think of an afternoon TV movie made by Unitarians for adolescents in Idaho. It has everything. Bad acting, bad shooting, bad lighting, bad music, bad scripting, bad casting. Oh, one thing it doesn't have is any guts. I really found it hard to imagine who could have made this movie and why. The great ethical dilemma of the main character is whether or not he should divulge evidence as a witness to events leading up to his boyfriend's near-fatal gay bashing by fellow yuppoid frat boys in some West Coast Shangri-La college. He really has to struggle with his moral obligation for days while his boyfriend is in a coma in an ICU. Whoa, dude, like what a bummer! The accompanying teenage twink titillation in the form of a shower scene in the frat house is really creepy. It did not surprise me to find that the cast's subsequent filmographies are on the thin side. So, if you run out of everything to watch, you might want to try this one, or not.

This movie has several opportunities to make a splash. There is a gay bashing. There is the closet gay who refuses to talk about his relationship yet wants to open up to a black female class mate. I feel like the story should have explored more with the closet lesbian and not so much on the back slapping antics of young men talking about how much sex they got the night before. The one really horrible item to this movie is that the lead actor was by far the worst actor in the movie. Everyone else was actually very, very good. I could not feel his anger when he found out who the bashers were, which I felt should have been the most pivotal point of the show. His frustration at being gay was sometimes there, sometimes not. I just felt like something ended up on the cutting room floor.

I rented the DVD and had high hopes after reading their blurb, but ultimately it was a let down. I have seen my share of gay films over the years, and I thought this one actually had an interesting story to tell, it just didn't tell it very well. Others here have decried the acting and rightly so.I found the whole thing right down to the gay bashing was very predictable and cliche. Even though the film is only about 90 minutes it felt much longer. It needed a better editing job and the script needed work. There just didn't seem to be a whole lot of depth to the characters. But I did like the str8 best friend character who finally gets Griff to do the right thing. But it seems to me that he could have gone to the cops and helped them out even without exposing himself to the the frat. If he really cared about Pete wouldn't he have done that sooner as the detective wondered?On a scale of 1-10 I'd give it a 5. But I liked the idea of the film better than its execution.