abrarmad This is the sickest movie ive ever seen... eww. Crappy lgbt movie which shows how distressed and disturbed those people are. Deep inside they know it so they wanna kill themselves.

ritera1 No pun intended.You can't deny there was some very good film making and acting in this, separate from the obvious cheap and garish porn elements.But the porn elements destroyed any sort of credibility.Now he must be a prude. A Republican. A religious sort. No.But I do think this rests all on opinion.I have no problem with homosexuality. They deserve equal rights. End of story. I do think that gay cinema does reflect an opinion of mine: Gays are persecuted for their sexuality. Thus, to fight back they are going to turn the sexuality up to 50. They are going to display sexuality in a form far beyond their comfort level or natural inclinations.Thus, I thought this was incredibly pretentious. Sure, I could have turned it off at any time. My argument is that I want to give a film a chance.The characters are incredibly damaged and dysfunctional and I think the actors are, too (based on watching the making of segment). They are fixated on living their life under the one umbrella of one element of life. Just like being black is not the beginning and end of life for people who happen to be black, then the sexuality of a person is not their entire life. To let it out of its box lets it run rampant.Again, this comes from my own opinion. I don't see what purpose it serves and distracts from the human elements of the story to shove pornography in the audiences faces. It's off-putting. (It's like saying strip clubs are therapeutic.)People are people and everyone is equal. But this depicted homosexuals and people addicted to their sexuality in a very bad light (and that's from a tree-huggin' liberal).

Tim Kidner Seeing Shortbus for the second time and reading a few reviews, it struck me that there's strong similarities with the Andy Warhol "presents" sex movies made by Paul Morrissey of the late 1960s.Filmed in the basement of his brownstone of 6th Street, 'Trash' became a cult, ultra-low budget underground movie, starring gay hustler Joe Dallesandro and featured absolutely natural full-frontal everything. 'Heat' and 'Flesh' followed and remained notorious fare for those 'who knew' for years.True, I have just been off at a tangent to the film in question but I think this connection is relevant and interesting; admittedly more to those old enough to know about and to have seen them. It does strike me that real people, from every sexual persuasion appear totally with their defences down - and a lot more - in Shortbus and in the drug-fuelled days of 1969, Underground New York similarly was a hotbed of "everything goes" sex.That's probably where the similarities do end, though - those 16mm fuzzy, grotesquely dingy home movies simply didn't live up to their hype and personally I don't rate them above novelty/historical status. Shortbus' flesh scenes though are clinically sharp, brightly lit and it's a 'proper' film, scripted, rehearsed (to a point....how many takes does a real sex act need?!) drama that peels away the facade of shallow and instantly gratification to provide a multi-layered emotional drama, that can be of surprising depth.I personally don't like the character of the Chinese-Canadian 'couples counsellor' (sex therapist, in real words) and her often aggressive stance puts a barrier between us and the other, more interesting and more complex characters. The gay couple who are the centre of the movie provide many interesting and challenging interactions and questions and are, actually very believable, whereas the Club is a carnal diversion that certainly adds spice and zest. The just post 9/11 time period casts an air of loss and uncertainty, making these often insecure souls even more so.Once you get over the misconceived idea that Shortbus is nothing more than a hardcore porn movie and is actually an extremely frank multi- relationship drama that happens to feature a lot of sex, then you're there, enjoying it and appreciating it. There maybe should a warning sticker on the DVD that says "Not all scenes contain sexual acts", because often, there's not.All-in-all a worthwhile, well made drama that will never be (thank goodness) for everyone but for those who do, it does pay dividends.

David J. Glenn This film could have been a great film, but whoever wrote and directed this film was obviously forcing unnatural events in order to fit sex scenes in.For example, there's a scene where James is masturbating and comes in his own mouth on camera for his boyfriend. Having him just masturbate would have been understandable, put going to this extreme when it has nothing to do with the story just shows how horny this director was while making the film.There's another scene where Sofia is having sex with her boyfriend and this scene shows several different positions, and is way longer than necessary.And another scene where a dominatrix just beats on this dude for awhile, this part of that scene could have been ten seconds long and got the same point across, but yet again it drags on for an unnecessary amount of time.The writer and director of this movie used sex scenes and other sexual related acts to film time. And it shows his lack of self confidence with himself. This was a great story, and had several interesting characters.James had sever depression, Severin had emotional connection problems, Jamie had relationship issues that were out of his control, Sofia couldn't orgasm and it was ruining her sexual relationship with her boyfriend, Ceth felt alone and struggled to find a partner, Caleb has extreme mental problems and had an obsession with James and Jamie.These characters are all dynamic, and unique. This movie could have been amazing. But the people putting this story together on film ruined it, and the sex scenes, and nudity overshadows the amazing characters and takes time away that could've been spent focusing on the actual story.I'm not against sex scenes and nudity, but when you're movies entire reputation is dependent on that, it's bad.This movie could've been so much more, but they dropped the ball.