It's My Party [Special Edition]
by Randal Kleiser
![It's My Party [Special Edition]](/images/It-My-Party-Special-Edition-B00008R9KD-L.jpg)
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Eric Roberts, Gregory Harrison, Lee Grant, Marlee Matlin, Olivia Newton-JohnDirector: Randal Kleiser
Brand: TWENTIETH CENTURY FOX HOME ENT
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Original Language), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); French (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround; Spanish (Dubbed), Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, NTSC
Picture Format: 1.85:1
Running Time: 110 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2003-06-03
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of It's My Party [Special Edition]
Movie Review: It jumped the shark when Margaret Cho walked in....
Summary: 1 Stars
Actually, it may have done it way before that. I don't like to give negative reviews but this movie is out of control. Somebody should have reigned these folks in, or, well, put a stop to it. Even on paper it just sounds insulting to the gay community and to AIDS victims. See, movies like Longtime Companion and Torch Song Trilogy were great and moving films. They also worked well because the casts were relatively unknown and were actually "acting", - playing roles. To create a big "party" of well known B (C or D) performers/actors just makes the entire premise silly and overbearing.
I guess the idea of Marlee Matlin and Margaret Cho came from someone who realized that each gay man has an asian girlfriend and a deaf girlfriend. I guess Cho is a good example of why this whole thing is so over the top. Wouldn't this be the kind of movie Cho would make fun of? She looks like she's phoning it in or just being plain condescending.
Eric Roberts is a very talented actor, really, I think he is, (check out Star 80) but...as a gay man that we are supposed to feel sorry for? He falls into the same trap as many other performances in the movie. It just comes across condescending and kind of... I don't know.... put upon.
More importantly, the story itself kind of backfires on their intentions. A gay man dying of Aids, plans to off himself but throw a party before he does it? And this makes him a....hero? No. It kind of makes him self posessed, self involved and a very confused martyr. The characters in Longtime Companion, for example, were all trying to fight to stay alive for themselves and the people around them. They were trying to make sense out of a tragedy that they did not deserve.
It just got to be so bad that I thought Olivia Newton John was going to break out into song somewhere in the film. I wouldn't have been surprised.
Summary of It's My Party [Special Edition]
Writer-director Randal Kleiser (Grease) creates "a genuine family feeling" (Roger Ebert) with this "brave, funny and heartbreaking" (Rex Reed, The New York Observer) film starring Margaret Cho, Academy Award(r) winner* Lee Grant, Gregory Harrison, Academy Award(r) winner** Marlee Matlin, Olivia Newton-John, Bronson Pinchot, Eric Roberts, George Segal and Roddy McDowall. Roberts gives a "touching, urgent performance" (San Francisco Chronicle) as Nick, a man whose three-year battle with AIDS is about to come to a close. Rather than face debilitation, he chooses to end his life but not before throwing the greatest farewell party of all time. As friends and family gather for a bittersweet celebration, something incredible happens. It's a two-daylong, uplifting, outrageous and life-affirming party that is ultimately Nick's everlasting legacy.Director Randal Kleiser is so noted for featherweight fare like The Blue Lagoon and Grease that when It's My Party hit theaters in 1996, critics clapped while filmgoers turned fickle. But it's a potent and tear-jerking film if only because of the personal weight it bears. As Kleiser revealed in interviews at the time of the film's release, the event that made him sit down and write the film "was so powerful it became a turning point in my life," and this film is a fictionalized, heartfelt depiction of that event.
It's My Party is about Nick (Eric Roberts) a young gay man whose AIDS symptoms become life threatening. He decides to toss a final party before he ends his life and invites his friends and family to this most special of special occasions. But then the ex-love of his life--a Kleiser-like film director (Gregory Harrison) who bailed on him after he was diagnosed with AIDS--arrives.
Kleiser called in favors from his friends and they all worked for scale. He said he "never worked on a set that was so supportive." The result is a movie about AIDS that merits a second look not only because it is empathic and loving, but because it's also defined by Kleiser's honesty and self-critical desire for redemption. --Paula Nechak
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