'Zero Patience' is a low-budget musical about the Aids crisis that actually treats the subject intelligently yet manages to be fun, light-hearted and optimistic. The film is targeted for an audience of gay males (or, at least, people who enjoy watching male nudity) but I liked it anyway.
The title is a wordplay on Patient Zero -- the gay man who allegedly brought Aids to North America -- and the fact that people hoping for an Aids cure are tired of waiting: they've got zero patience. Near the climax of the film, Sir Richard Burton performs the title song with his friends: "What's the time?" "Zero Hour." "How much patience?" "None." Earlier, another song (performed by the titular patient) has a chorus in French that translates as "I know, I know, I know that I don't know."
This Richard Burton is not the Welsh actor but rather the 19th-century explorer and linguist, who (according to this movie) stumbled into the Fountain of Youth and is still alive. (Played by an actor who looks nothing like the historic Sir Richard Burton.) I expected this movie's dialogue to mention that the real Sir Richard had himself circumcised in adulthood so that he could pass for an Arab in order to visit Mecca.
I never fault any movie for having a low budget, but I do get annoyed when low-budget filmmakers try to tell a story that really requires higher production values. In 'Zero Patience', one musical number is performed aboard an airliner in flight: but there are only four passengers and one stewardess (Dianne Heatherington), so the nearly-empty cabin -- a set that would have impressed me in its own right -- looks ridiculous. Ironically, if they'd filled the set with more actors, they could have got away with a cheaper set.
Similarly, at this film's climax, Burton and his friends attempt a civil disobedience ... but the action really cries for a crowd of rebels, not the handful shown here.
I was also annoyed that this movie is so deeply in Political Correctness territory. We're not supposed to use the phrase 'Aids cases' because it's demeaning. We can't say 'Aids victims' or 'Aids patients' because that's judgmental. For a while, the accepted phrase was 'people with Aids' (PWA) but even that became taboo. Now we're required to say 'persons living with Aids', abbreviated as PLWA. During the airliner sequence, Heatherington identifies her employer as 'PLWA Airlines'. If she had said 'PWA Airlines', this would have been a clever and funny pun on TWA, a real airline. But she had to weaken the pun for the sake of political correctness, changing it to PLWA. This is the same sort of stupidity that makes me look a racist if I say 'coloured people' but I get credit for being enlightened if I say 'people of colour'.
The cast of 'Zero Patience' -- some of them quite talented, others less so -- seem a bit too impressed with their own alleged audacity. Still, it took some guts to tackle this particular subject in this particular way. My rating: 4 out of 10, and here's hoping that 'Zero Patience' will become a period piece when Aids is curable.
The title is a wordplay on Patient Zero -- the gay man who allegedly brought Aids to North America -- and the fact that people hoping for an Aids cure are tired of waiting: they've got zero patience. Near the climax of the film, Sir Richard Burton performs the title song with his friends: "What's the time?" "Zero Hour." "How much patience?" "None." Earlier, another song (performed by the titular patient) has a chorus in French that translates as "I know, I know, I know that I don't know."
This Richard Burton is not the Welsh actor but rather the 19th-century explorer and linguist, who (according to this movie) stumbled into the Fountain of Youth and is still alive. (Played by an actor who looks nothing like the historic Sir Richard Burton.) I expected this movie's dialogue to mention that the real Sir Richard had himself circumcised in adulthood so that he could pass for an Arab in order to visit Mecca.
I never fault any movie for having a low budget, but I do get annoyed when low-budget filmmakers try to tell a story that really requires higher production values. In 'Zero Patience', one musical number is performed aboard an airliner in flight: but there are only four passengers and one stewardess (Dianne Heatherington), so the nearly-empty cabin -- a set that would have impressed me in its own right -- looks ridiculous. Ironically, if they'd filled the set with more actors, they could have got away with a cheaper set.
Similarly, at this film's climax, Burton and his friends attempt a civil disobedience ... but the action really cries for a crowd of rebels, not the handful shown here.
I was also annoyed that this movie is so deeply in Political Correctness territory. We're not supposed to use the phrase 'Aids cases' because it's demeaning. We can't say 'Aids victims' or 'Aids patients' because that's judgmental. For a while, the accepted phrase was 'people with Aids' (PWA) but even that became taboo. Now we're required to say 'persons living with Aids', abbreviated as PLWA. During the airliner sequence, Heatherington identifies her employer as 'PLWA Airlines'. If she had said 'PWA Airlines', this would have been a clever and funny pun on TWA, a real airline. But she had to weaken the pun for the sake of political correctness, changing it to PLWA. This is the same sort of stupidity that makes me look a racist if I say 'coloured people' but I get credit for being enlightened if I say 'people of colour'.
The cast of 'Zero Patience' -- some of them quite talented, others less so -- seem a bit too impressed with their own alleged audacity. Still, it took some guts to tackle this particular subject in this particular way. My rating: 4 out of 10, and here's hoping that 'Zero Patience' will become a period piece when Aids is curable.