For those of us who have read about Rock Hudson's life after his passing, there's really nothing new in this documentary, other than random interviews with people who knew him and who share their memories. The film also doesn't feel complete; strangely, there's the glaring omission of the lawsuit that Hudson's partner, Marc Christian, filed after his death (in fact, there's no mention of Christian at all in the documentary, possibly for legal reasons). They were partners for the six years preceding his death and Christian passed away in 2009... so the fact that the details of their relationship as well as the famous lawsuit were omitted seems particularly striking.
I also found the constant interspersing of clips from Hudson's films to become distracting after awhile. The filmmakers seemed to think it was clever to find similarities in Hudson's life with many of the scenes from his films, but after about an hour I felt the constant interruptions in the narrative with these asides eventually became so overused that it intruded on the tone of the documentary itself. This became particularly obvious at the end when the documentary details Hudson's passing. Probably 30 minutes of the film's 104 minute running time seem to be made up of clips that are used in this manner. Some of them have been edited by the filmmakers to be humorous in order to unnecessarily drive home a point.
Overall, I've been looking forward to seeing this film since I've heard about it but ultimately found it to be pretty disappointing. If you know nothing about Rock Hudson or his life, this might be interesting... but for many of us there isn't much territory that hasn't already been explored here.
I also found the constant interspersing of clips from Hudson's films to become distracting after awhile. The filmmakers seemed to think it was clever to find similarities in Hudson's life with many of the scenes from his films, but after about an hour I felt the constant interruptions in the narrative with these asides eventually became so overused that it intruded on the tone of the documentary itself. This became particularly obvious at the end when the documentary details Hudson's passing. Probably 30 minutes of the film's 104 minute running time seem to be made up of clips that are used in this manner. Some of them have been edited by the filmmakers to be humorous in order to unnecessarily drive home a point.
Overall, I've been looking forward to seeing this film since I've heard about it but ultimately found it to be pretty disappointing. If you know nothing about Rock Hudson or his life, this might be interesting... but for many of us there isn't much territory that hasn't already been explored here.