Zero Patience

The ghost of Zero - "patient zero", who allegedly first brought AIDS to Canada - materializes and tries to contact old friends. Meanwhile, the Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, who drank from the Fountain of Youth and now works as Chief Taxidermist at the Toronto Natural History Museum, is trying to organize an AIDS exhibition.

I couldn't stop laughing for most of this movie. Each time I started to settle down, a new joke or song or something would come about and kill me again and again.

One of those totally surprising contributions that remind us that there are still film-makers with talent and originality out there. This Canadian film is hard to classify - it's costume drama, romance, Broadway musical, ghost story, mocumentary, educational film, puppet show, and political soap-box all at the same time.

'Zero Patience' is a low-budget musical about the Aids crisis that actually treats the subject intelligently yet manages to be fun, light-hearted and optimistic. The film is targeted for an audience of gay males (or, at least, people who enjoy watching male nudity) but I liked it anyway.

Film Critic DELIVERED with stinging irony, that lyric is meant as a blanket indictment of empiricism, and of our abiding need to "classify and label," to "banish every doubt." Why?

A musical about AIDS (seriously) and it involves Patient Zero (the man who purportedly bought AIDS to the US) coming back from the dead (sort of) to clear his name.It took REAL courage to do this back in the early 1990s.

I was introduced to this film (yes, FILM) by a professor of film at Texas A&M University. I know, most would think that those two clash: a queer film at one of the most conservative "schools" in the country, but she's a lesbian.

I've seen nearly all of John Greyson's films and shorts and enjoyed every single one of them; this was a film I was interested in seeing again and purchased the DVD once it became available, so I'm likely not the most unbiased reviewer. However, this enjoyment is based on the movies themselves, their audacious vision and the innate originality of the filmmaker, not from any personal connection to him or to anyone else who appeared in or worked on any of the films.

I so wish I had a glass or two of whatever they were drinking when they thought up the idea of Zero Patience, I mean, hey now, a happy gay musical about how HIV started, with talking arseholes, ghost conversations, no illness, lie about who does and doesn't support AIDS research, alienate most people add dance numbers, songs, oh and don't forget bringing back to life a Victorian adventure pretending he's 170 years old and if people don't like it, pretend it's a satirical parody!It was made in the late 80's and had it come out then, it would have really set straight some of the common misconceptions about AIDS, however it didn't reach a mass audience until the mid 1990's, which by that time society understood HIV / AIDS a lot better.