| Angels in America | 
 enlarge | Director: Mike Nichols
Actors: Al Pacino, Meryl Streep, Emma Thompson, Patrick Wilson, Mary-louise Parker
Studio: HBO Home Video
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.98
Buy New: $6.77
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Avg. Customer Rating:  199 reviews
Sales Rank: 1598
Format: Anamorphic, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dts Surround Sound, Dubbed, Dvd-video, Subtitled, Widescreen, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), Spanish (Original Language), English (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed)
Rating: Unrated
Running Time: 352 minutes
Number Of Items: 2
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.7 x 0.7
MPN: 92299
ISBN: 0783129505
UPC: 026359229923
EAN: 9780783129501
ASIN: B0001I2BUI
Theatrical Release Date: December 7, 2003
Release Date: September 14, 2004
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand New! Factory Sealed 100%Satisfaction Guaranteed!
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| Customer Reviews:
 Overlong, dramatically crippled and full of unecessary elements. July 26, 2008
It was with a lot of anticipation that watched ANGELS IN AMERICA - the adaptation of a Pulitzer Prize winning play about the HIV outbreak during the Reagan years.
Lots of people here have criticized this 6-hour HBO huge production for political reasons... or because they disagree with some of the views axpressed... or because it supposedly glorifies this or that... or because Ethel Rosemberg is portraited in a certain way... etc.
But ANGELS IN AMERICA disappointed me simply because of its weaknesses as a film.
FIRST - It is a 6-hour film that has no material to be 6 hours long. At best, it could have been 3 hours long. I have nothing about long films when "long" is a consequence of a real dramatic necessity. Here it looks like the producers decided to stretch the screenplay in order to make it look more epic or more overwhelming, or more important, or something it clearly is not. MAYBE it was just a way of justifying the big budget.
SECOND - The scenes are clearly overlong with lots and lots of excessive dialog. The dialog is sometimes beautiful, powerful and poetic... but lost in the excess of talking heads.
THIRD - The ending itself lasts over 30 minutes. It looks like the third LORD OF THE RINGS: it takes forever to end!!
FOURTH - While Al Pacino (the lawyer who dies of AIDS), Jeffrey Wright (unforgettable as Belize, the gay black nurse) and Justin Kirk (as the AIDS victim who is abandoned by his boyfriend) all give beautiful performances, I must say that the other characters look like cardboard stereotypes.
And they are stereotypes because the author clearly hates them: A Mormon (Patrick Wilson) who discover he is gay, his wife (Mary-Louise Parker who looks like WILL & GRACE's Karen Walker on Valium), his Mormon mother (Meryl Streep) who does not understand her son, and Louis Ironson (Ben Shenkman), the selfish liberal Reagan-hater.
With six hours of film, one would expect all these character would have a lot more substance... but only some of them really are that developed. Take the mother (Meryl Streep), for example: she is a Mormon who arrives in NYC after discovering her son is gay. She is clearly someone with lots of prejudices and hate. And yet... we hardly see her having to cope with reality. We hardly the character's arch. Suddenly, she helps Walter Prior (Justin Kirk) to get to the hospital, stays with him, sees the angel, gets frightened and leaves the next morning saying she had a strange dream... and suddenly she is the most gay-friendly person in the world. And not a hint on how her relationship with her own son (the Mormon gay guy) has changed.
FIFTH - Somebody please explain to me WHY, on the very first scene, do we see Meryl Streep as an 80-year old Rabi? The make-up is great... but her voice OBVIOUSLY sounds like a woman pretending to be an old man!! Why? Several characters are played by the same actor. Sometimes it work (Jeffrey Wright as the travel agent and Meryl Streep as Ethel Rosemberg) and sometimes it doesn't (Mary-Louise Parked as a homeless woman and Justin Kirk as a SM leather man in the park). Why?
Well... ANGELS IN AMERICA could have been a landmark.
It simply isn't.
It is beautifully produced and it has great moments. Every production value is right and you can clearly see a top director surrounded by top-everything...
And yet it under-delivers.
 More deceptive marketing July 25, 2008
0 out of 5 found this review helpful
This is yet another production that seeks to disguise that it is about homosexuality until viewed. Nowhere on the packaging does any clue about the homosexual theme appear, and I purchased this by mistake.
I have been burned like this enough to realize that the deception is certainly no mistake. Whether it is marketing not wanting to put the full truth on the packaging, or some subtle push to get this into the homes of middle America is beyond me, but I didn't like being duped.
The acting appears good, but, as is typical, all homosexual or homosexual sympathetic characters are wonderful, caring, kind and noble. All those who disagree with this lifestyle are ogre-ish republican's, and jokes about former President Ronald Reagan are frequent. The flirting of one character while his boyfriend is in the first stages of ARC is somehow presented with sympathy, while for a heterosexual man to do the same while his wife lay dying would certainly not get the same treatment in film or media. It is hard to watch and get past inexplicable pieces like that.
The graphic sexual talk, and I'm no prude, is overdone and seems there only for shock value or to be "genuine" to the homosexual viewers. If heterosexuals described their sexual dalliances in such detail in any situation except the bedroom, it would be shocking.
Not really something I'd have chosen to watch if I knew the story up front.
 DISAPPOINTMENT June 30, 2008
1 out of 8 found this review helpful
It potraits people with AIDS/HIV as victims or as Angels. Well, there is nothing angelic about an individual who chooses to have sex with others who do not take into account the consequences about irresponsible sex. People get what they have coming to them. This film takes away all the responsibility away from those who have choosen not to be responsible. These people are Not victims, there Are a natural consequence to themselves. Get me a violin. I do have to admit; The acting is great.
 magical May 25, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
It's jsut wonderful, magical, great.... with great actors and actresses. Specially Meryl Streep, who plays 3 very different roles in it. I saw it some time ago, but I had to buy it for my collection.
weary of the proselytizing May 24, 2008
1 out of 5 found this review helpful
For a long time I have had this movie on my "list" of movies to watch because I liked what the critics had to say about it. The first hour or so was interesting, the struggle of choosing which comes first--your family or your lover. Then it progressed to the conflict between homosexual segments of the Jewish culture and Mormon culture and Reagan White House culture--and every character began to speak in what became monologues--even though it was supposed to be dialogue. There were a lot of profound thoughts--but the writer seemed to be intent on making every line of "dialogue" a profound thought--and wasn't content to limit each character to a few profound thoughts at at time but had to string them all together in long lines of dialogue that morphed into monologue. Unfortunately, when one character rattles on for five minutes at a time, those profound thoughts begin to sound like the jabbering heard in a room full of drunks. By the time I got to the second disk I was sick of their proselytizing and decided this movie is one of the worst bunches of crap I've ever listened to. Yes, AIDS is a horrible disease--I've lost friends to it. Yes, the world population is killing itself over prejudice. No, I'm not a Reagan Republican--I was a university student in California when Reagan was govenor of the state. He paid people to aim their guns at me--I've never forgiven the people in charge for allowing that to happen. Yes, there were good performances--and I applaud the actors for their work. However, I would not recommend this movie to anyone who isn't just a tad bit stoned.
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