This film is an absolute gem. The cast is perfect. The story is sublime yet very real and touching. Lea Coco as the straight brother is a revelation and after looking him up on Google I can see that he is a serious actor who is going places - lots of stage work. But the entire cast is so uniformly good and works so well together that it really is hard to pin-point any particular actor other than Coco who is just a knock-out and impossible to keep your eyes off. He has a way of stealing every scene he's in especially when he runs into some buddies in his brother's favorite NYC bar. The important thing about this film is that it really gets to the core of truth without preaching or pontificating. And this is rarely as successful as it is here.

This is the best movie with gay themes that I've ever seen. It's a small gem of a movie with terrific performances from every single cast member (down to the stock) and it has one of the sharpest accurate scripts I've ever come across in a movie. The movie generates a feeling of real life while still entertaining you in a "movie-world". I found that I identified with Dorian in a huge way and the movie feels like it's so good and so important to me now that I've seen it - I can list it in a way that I would say it was a life-changing movie. It's rare and beautiful when a movie becomes a best friend, something you can relate to and rely on when your own life gets you down - Dorian Blues is such a film and I would completely recommend it for gay people as well as straight people.

OK. It's a small indy film with small indy production values. However, it is cleverly written and quite funny. I laughed through most of it. I will admit that the story line mirrors my own adolescence (20 years earlier than the time in the movie). So, I am prejudiced. Michael McMillian, brilliantly playing the intelligent gay boy who confronts the straight patriarchy with searing wit and flat affect, is simply spot on. His delivery is flawless. Steve Fletcher does a great job as the overbearing father who dotes on the jock of the family and tries to run down Dorian. The dynamic between these two characters is very well done. The characters are fairly well developed. The mother is a bit dimensionless, but maybe that was accurate too. Frankly, in its league of smaller gay films, this one really stands out.

I'm a big fan of the 'coming out / coming of age genre' but DORIAN BLUES left me without a clue as to what all the raves were about. The film's first half hour is marked by clever dialogue, realistic performances and a light comic touch that is fun without being frivolous. But as the film wears on, the script becomes more and more episodic, without satisfactory resolution to any of the episodes. A kooky high school boyfriend story looks like fun, but goes nowhere fast and is dropped. A therapy session storyline (complete with montage) is dumped in favor of a religious cure. This too, is conveniently dispensed with. Some of the film's second half is less than pleasant (an S&M trick, another failed boyfriend) and it is Dorian's inability to resolve his sexual identity issues and the screenwriter's inability to follow through on a satisfying plot that eventually get tiresome. The film also drags things out over too much time. A tighter timeline might have helped keep Dorian and his blues on track.