22 Hilarious Excerpts From Scathing Reviews of “Stonewall”

Much to nobody’s surprise (especially that of the activists who were actually there), Stonewall has not fared well after its debut at the Toronto Film Festival. Here are just some of the many metaphors, comparisons and other delightful bits of wordsmithery that we can enjoy together instead of enjoying the movie.

1. “[Stonewall] slaps you in the face like a sodden cloth, over and over again.” (the daily beast)

2. “It’s so clumsy in its execution that it feels like someone set up an ornate chess set and then just smashed a watermelon on it.” (uproxx)

3. “Stonewall couldn’t be more whitewashed than if it was doused in Clorox Bleach and thrown into the laundry three times over.” (the heights)

4. “Stonewall has the opportunity to tell the story of a profound, pivotal moment in the history of gay rights in this country, and it not only fumbles it, it trips over it, then falls off a cliff, then sets itself on fire. ” (deadspin)

5. “[The] production design makes late 1960s Christopher Street look like Sesame Street.” (vanity fair)

6. “…often looks as if it was shot on the set of an old Janet Jackson music video.” (santa cruz sentinel)

7. “Ray leads a ragtag gang of street hustlers that look like a scruffy chorus line from an off-Broadway production.” (citybeat)

8. “When the group is sitting outside on a stoop, it all looks too staged, as if they are waiting to break into a song from Rent.” (nola)

9. “… it should be called “Independence Gay.” (vanity fair)

10. “…a gay Forrest Gump.” (uproxx)

11. “You get more of a sense of what it’s like to visit SeaWorld in the notoriously abysmal Jaws 3D than you do what it was like to patronize Stonewall in Stonewall. Stonewall teaches you about as much about being gay as the Aristocats taught you about being an aristocrat.” (defamer)

12. “Having Danny throw the first brick at the Stonewall riots is a bit like when Marty McFly goes back in time and steals rock ‘n’ roll from Chuck Berry, taking history away from the real participants.” (uproxx)

13. “[Danny screams] ‘Gay power!’ as though he’d just been stabbed with a high-dosage EpiPen.” (the a.v. club)

14. “You seriously watch Danny get off the bus and gape up at all those tall buildings while clutching his suitcase—acting less like an authentic representation of late-’60s gay culture, and more like a Newsies extra.” (deadspin)

15. “As if Selma had focused a fictional white liberal character instead of Martin Luther King, Jr.” (the wrap)

16. “Like saying that Rosa Parks was a tired lady who decided she’d rather rest her feet.” (salon)

17. “…the actually-gay Jonny Beauchamp lisps and screeches his way through his role like a straight high-schooler trying on homosexuality for a school play.” (indiewire)

18. “Stonewall plays like a William Inge knockoff, right down to the bookish, progressive little sister straight out of “Picnic.” (chicago tribune)

19. “Danny’s unflaggingly tolerant kid sister is an absolute nightmare… her every cloying message of total support like a rusty nail driven directly into the frontal lobe.” (indiewire)

20. “[The film] ends on a falsely contemporary note, as though it were a PSA for the It Gets Better campaign.” (vulture)

21. “Somehow, director Roland Emmerich has made a movie even less historically accurate than 10,000 BC, the one depicting Egyptian-style pyramids being constructed with the help of woolly mammoths.” (news-observer)

22. “…about as realistic as Godzilla’s radioactive flame breath.” (star tribune)