This star studded tv movie is watchable, but a huge letdown for anyone who saw the original Broadway show. This was a show that was very of-the-moment. The show premiered on Broadway in 1993; and the first part was called Millennium Approaches. It hooked into everyone's fears about Armageddon and Y2K; that the world would end with the turn of the millennium. And it cleverly tied Armageddon type imagery with the Holocaust that was the AIDS crisis; which was still very much in full swing in 1991 and 1992 when this was written and first produced. By the time this movie came out the Millennium had long turned over; there was no Armageddon; and the three-drug-cocktail had just been invented; and the world was turning a corner in terms of the AIDS crisis. So the show's themes just didn't have the same punch, the same immediacy when this HBO special aired in 2003-2004. The acting is good but as someone who saw the original show it just doesn't hold a candle to the play, unfortunately. And that goes pretty much across the board for this tv movie; it just can't compete with the landmark, Pulitzer Prize Winning play. The best part about this is Meryl Streep dressed up as an 80 year old Rabbi giving a eulogy; that was amazing. The rest was a disappointment.

A (mostly*) timeless masterpiece. I can't even describe this adequately, you'll have to experience it for yourself. *The epilogue feels very 1990/1.

A dense, strange epic on philosophy, theology, and politics. Heavy viewing, but consistently compelling and never so incomprehensible that you'd need a degree in one of the subjects to figure out what's going on (unlike some other philosophical fiction works I've encountered). Not everyone's cup of tea by a long shot, because a lot of it can be hard to watch, but if you can stomach the relentlessly intense misery, it's highly recommended.

Brilliant adaption as a TV movie of Kushner's Play by Mike Nichols. It combines opposites - classical Shakespearean soliloquy with contemporary realism, brings in the Devil next to God, roars at Nietzsche's from the other side - that perhaps existentialism - the grandson of Nietzsche brings up primal anger and sense of betrayal by God - not a sense of freedom. It is chaotic on purpose. It asks questions and gives no answers. It raises the issue of the meaningless of pain and suffering yet ends on a moment of hope.

Loved the entire series for so many reasons--the wit, the casting, the acting, the grappling with difficult situations, the conflict when watching, the basically very human element at work and the difficulty in being a viewer who wants to intervene as if these characters are real people. Moving and extraordinary work,

There is absolutely nothing wrong here. They got it right.