Critics reviews

There's only one place for a movie about homophobia and class unrest to go: a pride parade. But before the movie gets there, forsaken sons return to and walk out on their mothers, lessons are learned and tears are shed — mine included... Warchus opts... to make a kind of vibrantly acted musical, one that doesn't stint on the politics but makes them digestible, one that stages the dance sequences in the town hall as if everyone's lives depended on their energy.

This feels like a musical in its unrelenting sunniness and broad performances (dancing also figures in the plot); I had a hard time resisting its charm.

Pride" leaves me feeling targeted. It conveys the filmmakers' apparent presumption that the art-house audience and the critics who are part of that audience share the movie's values. I'm pleased when the world at large acts to advance those values and angry when it doesn't. But I'm not sufficiently pleased to see a movie like "Pride" that only reinforces my values.

Pride is an act of reverse alchemy, turning something beautiful and rare into depressingly ordinary dreck... It's all so numbingly generic and hackneyed that it comes as a shock when a moment rings true.

The cheerfully functional Pride isn't that stimulating as a piece of cinema, though thankfully it's livelier than Warchus's clunky Sam Shepard adaptation Simpatico (99). Still, it's an entirely laudable piece of work, and—regrettably—a striking anomaly given the current stultified, divisive, and reactionary state of British political culture.

Pride tells a real-life story so inspiring that it would require a concerted effort to screw it up. Thankfully, nobody involved with the film tried nearly that hard. Embarrassing moments do abound—Matthew Warchus, who's primarily worked in the theater, favors a shamelessly crowd-pleasing mode that's only one "I'm Gonna Be (500 Miles)" montage short of hitting every single cliché of popular British filmmaking. All the same, it would take a hard heart to resist this emotional juggernaut...

In its engaging, funny, affecting, even inspiring way, Pride is essentially a rousing paean to joined-up activism in an era of radical conservatism... Director Matthew Warchus offers little in the way of striking cinematic innovation: the technical style is straightforward, rooted in simple, well-lit set-ups punctuated by spectacular landscape shots or moments of handheld suspense...

It's rare to get such a heartfelt story of solidarity between people that on the surface are from such different worlds. Warchus has assembled a stellar cast to play this mélange. They sing their parts nicely as individuals but gloriously as a chorus.