Making Love
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Movie Reviews of Making Love
Movie Review: Making Love
Summary: 4 Stars
Saw this movie back in 1982-when was first released in theaters,then bought when it,was released the video market in Beta and VHS formats,now updating my video collection in DVD.Liked it then(memories when first came out-publicly)and Still would enjoy viewing it today and fortunate to have it among my collection.Movie Review: Classic but Great
Summary: 4 Stars
Great movie and how life once was. Like history its eched in stone. Worth the money!Movie Review: Important, But Of More Historical Than Artistic Or Entertainment Interest
Summary: 3 Stars
Throughout the 1960s and 1970s Hollywood had a distinct tendency to use homosexuality as a plot device, the "dirty little secret" that movitated everything from blackmail to suicide to murder, and with very few exceptions gay characters were inevitably portrayed as weak at best, disturbed to the point of psychosis at worst. These cinematic ideas reached their height in the 1980 film CRUISING, a viciously homophobic film that flatly portrayed gay men as either preditors or victims--and which proved so distasteful that it largely killed the "gay man equals bad man" stereotype that had haunted movie screens for two decades.
Released two years after CRUISING, MAKING LOVE was the movie that marked the shift in Hollywood's perspective, for it posited the idea that a gay man was not necessary a bad man any more than a straight man was necessarily a good one. It also approached a very difficult subject: the point at which a man conciously begins to recognize that he is homosexual. At the time, it was tremendously controversial (Kate Jackson was actually booed by a portion of the audience when she appeared on The Tonight Show With Johnny Carson to promote the film), and that controversy generated a tremendous amount of pre-release publicity.
The film received very mixed reviews when it opened, and although its first few days in general release showed strong attendance, box office rapidly fell off. My experience was typical: when I saw the film in theatrical release I had to go alone; the few who were interested in seeing it were afraid to be seen seeing it. The film was neither a critical nor popular success, and for years Hollywood used its failure as a rationale against creating films with similar themes.
All of this said, MAKING LOVE is not a bad film, but neither is it a particularly good one. The story concerns a happily married Californian couple Zach and Claire (Michael Ontkean and Kate Jackson) who would seem the perfect couple: upwardly mobile, shared interests, and deeply in love. But unbeknownst to Claire, Zach has found himself increasingly drawn to other men--and when he meets openly gay Bart (Harry Hamlin) he finds he can no longer surpress his hidden reality. Unfortunately, Zach really does love Clair in an emotional sense; unfortunately, Bart is not interested in a long-term relationship with any one.
The cast isn't bad. Kate Jackson was a major television star at the time, and the film marked her first serious foray onto the big screen; both Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin were considered leading men in the making; and popular character actors Wendy Hiller and Arthur Hill were there to lend support. And in terms of performance alone, they all manage quite well. Trouble is, they really don't have very much to work with: director Arthur Hill and screenwriter Barry Sandler work themselves to death in an effort to play down virtually every point of interest the story and ideas have.
What emerges is day-time soap opera at its least inspired. You like Zach and Claire and feel sympathetic toward them; even the very dubious Bart has his charms; and although the dithery Winnie Bates (Wendy Hiller) tends to overstay her on-screen welcome she is at least quite charming. But in the end, MAKING LOVE lacks the courage of its convictions: it is too afraid of its subject to do it justice.
All the same, MAKING LOVE did have a significant impact on the way Hollywood portrayed gay characters on screen. True, there would be no more mainstream gay dramas for two decades, but it did offer an alternative to CRUISING's nastiness, and before the decade ended gay characters would turn up in film after film--never as the central character, always on the sidelines, but increasingly portrayed as real people. It also undercut the idea that playing a gay character was a career killer for an actor; it is true enough that Jackson, Ontkean, and Hamlin never went on to big screen stardom, but all three have had long and respectable careers in television.
The print offered here is good rather than excellent. The bonus package is disappointing: there is none. Given the controversy that surrounded the film, it is a tremendous disappointment that there is no 'making of' information of any kind, and it seems a great pity that neither Jackson, Ontkean, or Hamlin are on hand for an audio-commentary. Recommended, but really of most interest to those tracing the development of gay characters in American cinema.
GFT, Amazon Reviewer
Movie Review: Making Nice <contains spoilers>
Summary: 3 Stars
An interesting artifact of the early 80's, "Making Love" chronicles the travails of Clair (Kate Jackson) and Zack (Micheal Ontkean), cutely married and new home buyers in the Hollywood Hills. Predating the WE network by a solid two decades, there's a fly in the ointment: Zack harbors a secret hankering for Men (as a matter of fact, the sight of two hunks on a motorbike at an intersection makes him choose to buy the house). Sadly for Clair, Zack meets brooding writer Bart (Harry Hamlin), and his reaction to the meeting is not a trip to IKEA for some patio furniture. He falls instantly, madly, and inexplicably in love: inexplicably because Bart is written as one of the most unloveable character in the movie, if not the hemisphere. The movie opens with the now hoary device of having the principals stare into the camera and talk about their feelings against a blinding white background, as if they were in God's waiting room, or at the Apple store. In this case, it's Clair and Bart talking about Zack, so much so that you wonder if Zack is dead by the end of the movie. [spoiler] He's not, he's just in New York. Which may be the same thing to the film-makers.
The actors do what they can with the material: Kate Jackson fares the best. I don't know if her throw-away line "Did you eat a cookie?" was in the script or an ad-lib, her delivery is so perfectly off-hand that I can't tell. She really makes you wonder what would have happened if someone had given her a really meaty part. Harry Hamlin does what he can with a part that is basically an unlikeable mess, and Michael Ontkean is so-so as the lead. He's not good enough to show that Zack is really torn between his deep love for Clair and his sexual attraction to men, which makes his character seem kind of less-than-nice. Actually, Nice is the big problem here: everybody connected with the movie wanted to make it so accessable, and not offend anyone that you get the idea that finding out your husband likes guys is about as tragic as losing a really cherished hamster. The scene that shocked me at the time (Yes, I saw it when it first ran) was the scene where Kate Jackson goes to visit a guy that Zack tricked with. The guy lives in a dingy single, with crummy furniture and a jar of Vaseline on the nightstand. After 2 hours of early 80's cutting edge tech and sunny interiors, it's as if suddenly we got a scene that was taken over by Fassbinder. That is until they start talking about their feelings again.
Needless to say, they end up sadder but wiser, Clair and Zack each with handsome hubbies, and Bart bonding with his Betamax. An interesting look at pre-AIDS LA, with a few West Hollywood locations that are still there today, like Dan Tana's. Worth a look.
Movie Review: An Interesting Mess But Worth a Look
Summary: 3 Stars
I remember seeing this film in theatres in 1982 and it actually helped me come out a short time later. Is it controversial ? You bet. Groundbreaking ? Sort of. "Making Love" actually showed romance between two men, something that mainstream Hollywood has rarely done before or since. Kudos go to Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin for courageously tackling the love scenes and Ontkean is especially effective as the sexually confused and frustrated Doctor who finally accepts the fact that he is gay. Hamlin, whose film career never recovered from this, looks great and does his best with the role of a promiscuous, lonely gay man who is great in bed but lousy in love. The weak link in the acting chain here is Kate Jackson. She is woefully miscast as a woman in her late 20's who wants a career and a baby. Her whiny, raspy voice is grating and her mawkish sentiments detract from an otherwise meaty role. The story is a little too predictable but in pre-AIDS gay culture, it appears accurate enough. Too bad that the DVD does'nt include interviews with the Stars to discuss the fallout they faced after this film was released.