How sad is this?

Absolutely the worst movie.

This is a dark and sometimes deeply uncomfortable drama

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

Fabulous! will be most interesting to people who have no knowledge of queer films. Anyone who already has a semi-decent working knowledge of queer films will probably find Fabulous! to be an OK choice to watch/listen to while going through a pile of unsorted mail. Anyone hoping to find information about films they've never heard of will probably be disappointed.Fabulous! does a good job including many films that could be tagged L, G, B, T, and Q though it quickly passes over or neglects some that seem like they'd have a bigger role in a documentary like this. There are a lot of interviews with makers and supporters of queer cinema. Actually it's essentially all interviews, Fabulous! is a talking head film with a few clips thrown in here and there. Some of the interviews, especially those with queer actors, offer little more than "Oh my god, I loved (insert queer film title here)!".Ironically for a film about film Fabulous! could have been just as effective as radio documentary because it's not a film you really need to watch to get anything from. Most the time you're just staring at someone's face as he or she talks. Every now and then the talking heads are interrupted by a clip, still shot, timeline of 20th century gay history, or montage of queer film titles. The words and still images are thrown on the screen so briefly you can barely read anything or take in the images.Over all Fabulous! (a terrible gay cliché title that doesn't describe all queer films) feels like a promotional film for a film fest, queer TV channel, or DVD rental service...Which it just might be as Netflix was somehow involved int the production.

This is a very disappointing documentary purporting to cover the history of gay representation in cinema but lacking focus. The film zips quickly from Anger's Fireworks to films produced in the late 1960s, without a mention of the upfront art cinema and sub-textual mainstream films produced in-between. Instead we get supposed "experts" in the subject who don't appear to know what they are talking about - B Ruby Rich seems under the misapprehension that Jarman and Fassbinder were making films pre-Stonewall.After this barely credible preamble, the film settles down to talking about the series of New Queer Cinema films which were produced in the early 1990s. Many of these are important films, but the slant here is very US-centric and the discussion is rarely rises above the anecdotal. The story then zips forwards to a very uncritical look at how gay cinema has begun producing happy, shiny DVD fodder for middle-class audiences; it isn't surprising that Bruce LaBruce doesn't get a name-check! Nearly all of the talking heads here (with the exception of the great John Waters) cry out for a queer version of mainstream cinema; it would have been nice to have some dissenting voices. It would also have been nice to have a debate around a film like Basic Instinct - gay critic Camille Paglia loved the film but is airbrushed from the version of events presented here.The bias of the film gives the lie to the cry at the end for a pluralistic gay cinema; on this evidence, most of the people here hail from a very narrow, middle-class American background and most of them want a very anodyne, US-oriented gay cinema. This makes the film feel cliquey and a massive missed opportunity.

Sure, for a newcomer, 'Fabulous! The Story of Queer Cinema' was educational. For people that have been around the queer-independent block a few times, it was ho-hum for the most part. Some interviews were insightful, mostly by John Waters, but others told us what's already been said before. And the time line they showed throughout was a bit off-subject, if this was, in fact, a documentary on "queer cinema" and not on miscellaneous gay events. However, they did hit the nail on the head with the overabundance of "coming out" and "AIDS" stories. I seriously thought I would pull my hair out if another one of either genre came out in the 1990s. I understand this movie came out in 2006, so thankfully they got to 'Brokeback Mountain' but missed the new trend in more recent cinema: the return of homophobic male-bonding/bromance features. I even liked 2009's 'The Hangover' but once again, it seems the new trend is the recent craze to justify homophobic behavior. People do see it as funny, but unfortunately it allows the young males seeing this justify their hatred or simply scared actions. Unfortunately, this documentary didn't touch on that, but still it was an insightful look at pre-coming out cinema (including 'Beefcake' features) and it was nice to see a documentary that's raw and uncensored (full frontal nudity and language abound.) It's worth a viewing.

For someone who is not familiar with the history of gay and lesbian cinema, this was an outstanding introduction to the subject.I was fascinated with the early "gay" films and the fact that they were basically pictures of muscle men. I can imagine the Governator in some of these films.What was significant and more important than the lack of films was the fact that gay and lesbian youth did not have any role-models to tell them that they were OK in how they felt. How many suicides resulted in a lack of gay films and gay actors on television? Taking us through the early days to today and thinking about the future of gay and lesbian films, it was an eyeopening experience and a must see for anyone interested in cinema history.