It feels like Emmerich couldn't help but make his Stonewall a mashup of My Own Private Idaho and Independence Day.

| Feb 9, 2021

Stonewall is a movie about a pivotal moment in LGBT history as filtered through the perspective of a fictional hunk of Wonder Bread named Danny who steps off a bus from Indiana and right into a central role in the Christopher Street scene.

| Nov 10, 2015

The Stonewall Riots were a triumph for a marginalized community, but Emmerich fails to convey the significance of the event in any meaningful fashion. The subject matter deserves better, and so do we.

| Original Score: D | Sep 28, 2015

more than bad and worse than disappointing, a tragic distortion of a vitally important story that insults the people it tries to honor and insults its audience as well.

| Original Score: D | Sep 25, 2015

It's a self-financed passion project, from a man who might be the most financially successful out gay filmmaker ever. We should be celebrating this, but man, oh man, does he make it difficult.

| Sep 25, 2015

Although handsomely crafted, well-acted and made with transparently noble intentions, Roland Emmerich's "Stonewall" is a movie that seems destined to please almost no one.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 25, 2015

There may be a good movie to be made about the Stonewall riots, which triggered much of the gay power movement in 1970, but "Stonewall" isn't it.

| Original Score: C- | Sep 25, 2015

The film is a vital, evocative reminder of a turbulent time that paved the way for hard-fought freedoms. For that alone, it's of value for younger audiences, gay or straight.

| Sep 25, 2015

Stonewall isn't good, but it's not quite as bad as you might imagine.

| Original Score: C- | Sep 24, 2015

Overall, the effect is closer to a Monty Python skit or a Village People music vid than a serious film about civil rights.

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 24, 2015

There's a curious weightlessness about many key scenes.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 24, 2015

What Stonewall lacks in narrative power it makes up for with energy, sincerity and heart.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 24, 2015

For its two-hour-plus duration, the movie struggles to fuse incompatible concepts.

| Sep 24, 2015

Rather than the sophisticated telling the tale deserved, "Stonewall" winds up being as shallow and artless as the wide-eyed naif at its center.

| Original Score: 1/4 | Sep 24, 2015

The film is plainly a meaningful project for the openly gay Emmerich and Baitz. Stonewall carries tremendous symbolic weight for millions the world over. So why this white-bread generica?

| Original Score: 1.5/4 | Sep 24, 2015

Consider "Stonewall" a place holder until a better movie arrives.

| Original Score: 2/4 | Sep 24, 2015

This is an OK movie about a serious subject and an important milestone in the road to gay freedom and equality. It's just a shame it didn't accomplish the kind of cinematic punch as did the Oscar-winning Milk.

| Original Score: 2.5/4 | Sep 24, 2015

Despite [Emmerich's] noble intentions, the movie is just as ham-handed and formulaic as any of his popcorn movies.

| Sep 24, 2015

The big problem is that Stonewall is fundamentally confused, mixed up to the point where a viewer wouldn't be able to tell why the Stonewall Riots happened if they didn't already know.

| Original Score: C- | Sep 24, 2015

What an oddly tone-deaf film.

| Original Score: 2.5/5 | Sep 24, 2015