Partners

Partners (1982)

Runtime: 93 minutes

Directed by: James Burrows

Starring: Ryan O’Neal, John Hurt, Robyn Douglass, Kenneth McMillan

From: Paramount

Here is a movie I’ve heard about for a long time now and Monday night I was channel-surfing when I came upon the FLIX channel (yeah, I still get the Showtime channels for free, as I have for the past year, even though they’ve never been paid for and the house has been getting it for free for that long… hey, it’s the cable company’s fault!) and noticed that this movie was on, so I checked it out.

The main thing about the movie is that it’s a comedy/murder mystery with an emphasis on the former; oh yeah, and the gimmick is that the two cops (O’Neal and Hurt) have to go undercover to try and solve the case… and as the case involves the murder of homosexuals, they have to disguise themselves as a gay couple; that isn’t a problem for Hurt’s character, who IS a homosexual. Let me tell you, Hollywood’s views on homosexuals in ’82… yikes in hindsight.

Before I get to that, though, I have to mention the film Cruising. It’s a 1980 film starring Al Pacino as a cop who gets asked to go undercover to investigate a series of homosexual murders and he has to dive deep into the S&M homosexual world. Sound familiar? I’ve seen the movie before and it’s just way too ambiguous rather than straightforward for my tastes. It’s not awful, but… at least it’s rather unique. I understand that the movie got a LOT of bad press. It didn’t make a lot of people happy on either side.

With Partners, it’s like a comedy parody of Cruising, as peculiar as it sounds to do a comedy version of a dark and moody film. Overall, the movie is just strange more than anything else. Like I said, the views on homosexuality back then aren’t like it is today, where you have states that have legalized gay marriage. The stereotypes you get to see here... yikes. The F-word gets used often, and I do not mean the four letter word. I mean the slur against homosexuals.

Most of the homosexuals you get to see are lisping prancing sissies (hey, that’s the portrayal they were given) who were pink or purple and are happy to do such things as feel up guys they just meet, wear short-shorts, run naked on the beach (!) or other similar actions. Sure, the movie makes Hurt the guy who gets the most done on solving the case, but... hell, it's implied (or rather, it's more explicit than implicit) that Hurt's character falls in love with Ryan O'Neal! Then again, who can resist him wearing a leather jacket and headband, which I guess is his idea of dressing up like a gay guy.

The film wasn't all that funny, unfortunately. Sure, I chuckled a few times but most of the humor is rather dated. It's more interesting than anything else. Like I said, it's strange more than anything else. As for the murder mystery part, it's not too much. I won't reveal what it is, but it's just as wacky and odd as the entire movie, and that's about all that needs to be said about this motion picture.

I'll be back a week from today with a new review.