Philadelphia (1993)

This is the first major Hollywood film on gay rights and is inevitably mainstream, with strong emotional appeal, courtroom drama, and standout performances from Hanks and Washington that make it a touching demand for fraternity and justice. It notes some TV-movie sentimentality and timidity in portraying the gay relationship but recommends it overall for its compassion and groundbreaking exploration of attitudes toward sexuality.

The film is a brave but disappointing Hollywood breakthrough on Aids and homophobia, overly cautious and committee-like in its script with too many emotional insurance policies to appeal to a broad audience. It praises Tom Hanks' fine performance and physical transformation but criticizes the compromises in depicting gay life and the story's failure to fully explore either main thread.

The critic views Philadelphia as an unfortunate misstep for Demme that panders to straight-male audiences in the guise of piety rather than addressing AIDS with serious complexity. They single out the opening credits sequence for its visual and aural humanism amid broader criticism of the film's superficial approach and performances.

The air of do-goodism hangs over the film, making it hampered by its own awareness of being years behind the AIDS crisis, though it is a milestone with strong performances. Demme is more emphatic than needed, trying too hard to break America's heart.

The film has the courage of its own simplicity in charting the hero's descent and the ascent of unlikely feelings in others, despite patches of preachiness. Demme has reinvented the weepie with cleareyed determination, evident in extraordinary closeups focused on the human face.

The film mostly succeeds in being forceful, impassioned and moving as the first high-profile Hollywood picture to take AIDS seriously, though it often works in safely predictable ways. It opens with a stirring montage of Philadelphia street life and shows tact in introducing the central character.

The film is Hollywood's first major movie about AIDS and is as good as could be expected. It uses a simple courtroom plot as a framework to examine issues around discrimination and disclosure without relying on manipulative emotional scenes.

This extremely well-made message picture about tolerance, justice and discrimination is pitched at mainstream audiences as the first major Hollywood film to directly tackle AIDS, with a dynamite lead performance from Tom Hanks. It is intelligent but too neatly worked out in its political and melodramatic details.