Teringer An Exercise In Nonsense

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Jenna Walter The film may be flawed, but its message is not.

Lela The tone of this movie is interesting -- the stakes are both dramatic and high, but it's balanced with a lot of fun, tongue and cheek dialogue.

jm10701 I'm going to do something I've never done before--give a good rating to a movie that's so bad I could hardly watch 95% of it. That's because there are three very peripheral things about this movie that I like so much they go a long way toward compensating for the mess it is in general.Just about every negative comment about this movie in other reviews is true. It's a muddled mess that doesn't know what it wants to be, trying at various times to be funny, touching, topical, sexy, tragic and transcendent, and succeeding at none of them. It doesn't even know what its title is. In the opening credits, it's called Heaven's a Drag; in the end credits and on the DVD, it's called To Die For. (It was released the year before Gus Van Sant's much more famous and completely unrelated To Die For, starring Nicole Kidman, so the title wasn't stolen; the same title had been used for a Dracula movie several years before either of these movies was made anyway.) Ordinarily this movie wouldn't deserve more than a couple of stars at most. But now for the good stuff, the three things that together move me to praise it despite its very serious flaws.First of all, this movie has a huge heart. Practically nobody involved seems to have any talent at all. Everything a good movie needs--competent screenplay, direction, cinematography, acting, etc--is lacking. But its good intentions are as pure and true and clear as its execution is muddled. A lot of people cared a lot about this movie, and it shows. I don't know HOW it shows, but it does. I've never before rewarded good intentions alone in reviewing a movie, and I might not in this case either if the other two factors weren't working in its favor too.Second, there's something very appealing and attractive about Ian Williams, who plays the drag performer Mark. His performance in this movie isn't much better than anything else about it, but the man himself is unusual and unusually interesting. His speaking voice, for one thing, is lovely.Third (and I've saved the best for last) is Ruth Wallis's fabulous song "Queer Things (are happening to me)." The song plays during the opening credits and carries into the first two scenes, where Mark is preparing for and then doing his drag performance to it. (Another reviewer ridiculed the fact that this evidently is the only song Mark knows, but it's good enough to carry several whole drag careers single-handed, if you ask me).I'd never heard this song before, and I'd never heard of Ruth Wallis, but it and she are a joy, and Williams's act accompanying it is superb. I must have watched the first two and a half minutes of the movie 20 or 30 times just for the delight of hearing the song and watching his act, and I haven't come close to being tired of it yet.So for its big heart, for Ian Williams's personal charm, and most of all for "Queer Things," I heartily recommend watching the first two and a half minutes of this movie. That's not much, but it's well worth it.

bellhollow I love watching disconnected movies with parts of hilarity intersperced. However, this movie was so serious and about a guy dying from AIDS and then the hilarious things that occur as he comes back from the dead to help his lover grow up. The supporting story line was much better than the cable guy/drag queen story line. Maybe that's why I continued to watch this. I just could not get the seriousness/comedy going between the two main characters. Maybe because I know people who have AIDS and those who have died. The ending was purely GHOST and was a good ending but still, I was more interested in the relationship between the neighbor and her beau.

casehougland The box for "To Die For" suckered me in -- a shirtless hunky guy and the promise of some laughs and sex. There was plenty of Thomas Arklie (Simon), who's easy on the eyes, but no laughs and little sexiness.The couple, Mark and Simon, have allegedly been together several years, but neither character is interesting enough to care about, so it's hard to imagine that they care about each other. The fault seems to lie in the script, not the performances; both actors do the best they can with what they're given. The ending is sappy and unaffecting (well, not totally unaffecting; I felt relief that it was over). If you're looking for a movie about gay relationships and AIDS that's funny, "Parting Glances" is far better.

baker-9 I had read a few positive reviews of this film, and was truly surprised at how dreadful the whole thing was. Positioned as some cross between an AIDS-related story and some kind of "Ghost"/"Blithe Spirit" tale, this film can't always make it's mind up what it wants to be. Simon and Mark are a gay couple who have an "open" relationship - Simon is able to have anonymous (though safe) sex on the side when he wants. Mark is HIV+ and he and Simon don't seem to have a sex life anymore. When Mark dies, Simon - who has made a habit of shutting off his emotions after being rejected years ago by his father - tries to erase his memory and just get on with being a bachelor. Not that his behavior before Mark's death was much different. But Mark returns in ghostly form and foils his various trysts, while getting Simon to open up and admit his true feelings.Unfortunately, Simon is such a selfish SOB, it's impossible to feel any empathy toward him for most of the film. By the time he is supposed to be more sympathetic, it's too late to care. Mark, on the other hand, follows in Demi Moore's footsteps from "Ghost," by crying profusely throughout the movie. There is a bizarre switch in tone after Mark returns. Suddenly we get some lame attempts at humor, a la the TV show "Bewitched." But that doesn't last long. Once Simon's emotional health is at stake, the whole thing becomes increasingly mawkish, with amateurish attempts to jerk at your heartstrings. The finale, with a gold-plated muscle-boy angel guiding a tearful Mark to heaven while a chastened, grief-stricken Simon waves goodbye is just stupefying, chiefly because it isn't intentionally funny.