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Critics Consensus: I Am Michael takes a determinedly balanced approach to its complex subject, and although the results don't always add up, they're anchored by strong work from James Franco.
Critic Consensus: I Am Michael takes a determinedly balanced approach to its complex subject, and although the results don't always add up, they're anchored by strong work from James Franco.
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All Critics (35) | Top Critics (13) | Fresh (22) | Rotten (13)
Franco's fantastic here. He gives a fieriness to Michael as a gay advocate, then seamlessly slides into borderline madness as he starts accepting that the "voice" he hears is God's.
Kelly is finding his sea-legs as a director.
Despite some wooden line readings, Franco gives himself fully to the challenge of rendering Glatze with truth and resolve.
Mr. Franco broods and puzzles and vacillates. But he often seems abandoned by a director whose approach is so noncommittal and dramatically limp that it strands the actor, and his character, in a bland purgatory of conflicting motivations.
A soberly stylish, impressively non-judgmental portrait of a controversial real-life case of transformation.
An intermittently affecting - but not entirely convincing - conversion story.
Michael is not without his weaknesses and despite declaring that he no longer identifies with being a homosexual, it does not necessary mean that he ceases relationships with the same sex.
Features silent bar brooding, sad piano-scored walking and absolutely no fun, anywhere, ever. The sex isn't fun, the politics isn't fun, the prayer is determined but never ecstatic or tender.
Director Justin Kelly clearly presents the facts of the story, but the necessary psychological content is lacking.
Well, that Franco is over; he's gone down a different road in movies that trifle with gay experience in not always positive ways like the new I Am Michael.
... struggles to find a consistent tone and feels embellished in spots, yet it evolves into a provocative examination of the crossroads between religion and sexuality
The performances are uniformly good and Kelly's effort to tell an unbiased story is admirable, but I Am Michael ultimately delivers more in the way of talking points than drama.
A remarkably sympathetic and nuanced character study about an idealist LGBT activist who slowly becomes a pathetic shadow of himself due to fear and religion, and it is beautiful to see how the film never vilifies him, which would have been actually quite easy.
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