The critical drubbing this movie received on its release is justified only in part. True, this is a blatant soap opera; and in places the dialogue goes from hokey to ham-fisted. But this movie also does many things better than some more prestigious projects. For one thing, instead of just declaring its characters "in love" it shows them finding love in a shared focus: sharing books, making music together. Because they enjoy so much in common, it's easy to see how the confused doctor and his wife could have a successful marriage of several years. The gay guys don't just have sex; they play together. They race each other in the swimming pool, they play arcade games. The movie addresses a number of issues related to being gay in the 70s which are still issues today, and addresses them in ways that are smarter than the movie generally gets credit for. These include the doctor's conflict between his sexual attraction to men, and his genuine love for his wife, in a world without models for navigating these conflicts. This is the rare movie that acknowledges the existence of gay men married (often successfully) to women. It shows the struggle of a respected professional man discovering and admitting his homosexuality in a time when the costs of doing so were very high. Michael Ontkean and Harry Hamlin deserve credit for "playing gay" when that was riskier for an actor than now (especially as Hamlin was being marketed as a piece of macho beefcake). Their suggestions of intimacy are more convincing than the pictures of gay intimacy in other Hollywood products (e.g., the stilted interactions of "Phildelphia"). And the gay guys get to live on about as happily as their straight counterparts; they don't die, they're not punished, they're not revealed as psychopaths. Ontkean is charming, but Hamlin and Kate Jackson turn in subtle, affecting performances. There's a remarkable cameo by a fellow named Asher Brauner, who plays one of the doctor's one-night-stands. Finally, the script isn't entirely as bad as some have made out. Hamlin has a beautiful monologue about the ways in which his childhood experience of being rejected as a little league player made him understand the loneliness he would face as a gay man. There's much in this movie that a gay man of a certain age can relate to, and much to enjoy despite the script's soap opera shortcomings.
Review of Making Love
