Zero Patience

1993

Musical

2
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Rotten 47% · 8 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Spilled 47% · 1K ratings
IMDb Rating 6.2/10 10 815 815

aids musical science fiction

Plot summary

The ghost of "patient zero", who allegedly first brought AIDS to North America - materialises 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 organise an exhibition about the disease for the museum's "Hall of Contagion".

Director

John Greyson Photo
John Greyson

Top cast

Bernard Behrens Photo
Bernard Behrens as Dr. Placebo
Jeremy Podeswa Photo
Jeremy Podeswa as AIDS Demonstrator
Michael Callen Photo
Michael Callen as Miss HIV
Von Flores Photo
Von Flores as Ray
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB
926.1 MB
1280*712
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
24 fps
1 hr 40 min
Seeds ...
1.68 GB
1824*1016
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
24 fps
1 hr 40 min
Seeds 8

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by ccqfcdpyx 6 / 10

I finally found it

I watched this when I was a kid in the 80's in the UK on late night tv and while I didn't really understand it at the time (my parents would change the channel whenever 'upsetting' news on the worldwide epidemic would come up) the pop a boner song and general weirdness managed to burn itself into my memory somehow.Obviously, the attitudes and focus of the gay community now are worlds away from this catastrophically sad time period in our history, and drugs like prep and doxypep exist to prevent and manage this once fatal diagnosis, but for many kids of the period, the coverage drastically changed our attitudes towards sex at a very formative time far away from sex positivity.For this reason, I'm fascinated by movies and tv on the disease from this time as much as I am on retrospective movies. Attitudes towards homosexuality (homophobia) at the time certainly didn't help control this disease and the contrast with how we saw similarly fatal covid outbreaks dealt with was also interesting. Remnants of this homophobic attitude were seen with the global Monkeypox outbreak in 2022 but at least show some progress has been made in not demonizing the victims and some awareness of how stigmatization of groups can easily occur through sloppy, thoughtless reporting when the public are baying for blood and updates.The film itself is an interesting time capsule, not always successful, but always intriguing and about something important. The concept of a Canadian musical on the aids epidemic seems irreverent (and is) but this levity was very needed at the time when communities were being rapidly decimated and a generation of young men ultimately lost their lives because no treatment or cure existed. If we forget the past we are doomed to repeat it.
Reviewed by PlanNine 5 / 10

Important but sloppy

Zero Patience is provocative, engaging and indeed, an important film. It is an accessible way to be introduced to many issues regarding AIDS. However, this musical is never very engaging. The main fault of this is the music itself, which is dated and irking.The plot and characters of Zero Patience are involving enough. Too bad the rhythm of the film keeps getting interrupted by musical numbers that don't really seem to fit and are not very entertaining. These pieces fall flat in terms of conception and seem to want to be campier than they actually are.In summary: it's an important movie about AIDS that was sloppily conceived.
Reviewed by gavin6942 6 / 10

Strange Musical

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.The mainstream Austin Chronicle cited a "murky plot, frequently weak acting and often mediocre music" while still praising the film's "spunk, humor, enthusiasm and wit." This is pretty much it. The film itself is not very good, though you can see it was striving for something bigger and better. Then again, by having your lead be a time-displaced scientist, how seriously can we take it? The Washington Post compared Zero Patience unfavorably to Hollywood's big-budget, big-star AIDS-themed film, Philadelphia, claiming that the latter's protagonist, Andrew Beckett, "looked sick, dealt with his illness and allowed the audience to sympathize," unlike the "healthy hoofers" of the musical who, because they didn't look sick enough, seem "to deny some of the grim realities" of the disease. Now, I don't know that the two films can be compared, but I do agree that the film seemed to promote sexuality without accepting any of the negative aspects... dispelling the "patient zero" myth is a good thing, but it doesn't mean we can go back to our bad habits!
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