52
Metascore
7 reviews · Provided by Metacritic.com
- 75The A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThe A.V. ClubNoel MurrayThe significance of that group anecdote - from the message of unity to the way Mardi Gras gave some gay New Orleanians a way to explain their lives to their parents - can't be overstated, either for its impact on human rights or its power to move.
- Genial documentary combines extravagance of Mardi Gras drag with an underexposed story of early gay-rights achievements.
- 63New York PostLou LumenickNew York PostLou LumenickThe Sons of Tennessee Williams, which offers touching interviews with many older gay men, somewhat awkwardly connects this history with the efforts of a gay Mardi Gras crew to keep going in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
- As the film cuts back and forth between the present day and a historical survey of gay culture, its tone wavers between dutifully somber and irrepressibly funny.
- 50VarietyDennis HarveyVarietyDennis HarveyTim Wolff's documentary is a diverting mix of colorful interviewees and footage from one such krewe's 40th anniversary ball, but it doesn't probe very deep.
- 30Village VoiceErnest HardyVillage VoiceErnest HardyA tedious exercise in filling in historical blanks through exhausted tropes.
- 25Slant MagazineDiego SemereneSlant MagazineDiego SemereneThis time-tested project of tracing gayness back to when its shame was so explicitly enforced feels not only passé, and naïve, but mostly unproductive in a post-Judith Butler world in which drag queens are on TV teaching biological women how to better perform womanhood.