In 1978, French filmmaker Francis Veber unleashed La Cage aux folles on the unsuspecting public. A tale of two gay men who have to try and hide their homosexuality when one of their son announces his marriage and his fiancée and her parents come to visit, it was a risqué movie at the time and was remade in 1996 as the Robin Williams comedy, The Birdcage. It also marked the first time Veber used gay characters for humour purposes. He also co-wrote a sequel before moving onto scripting American comedies like Buddy Buddy and My Father The Hero. Perhaps meant to cash-in on the success of his previous gay themed films, Partners marks one of his earlier Hollywood efforts and feels like a mix of light murder mystery and The Odd Couple.

Police Sergeant Benson (Ryan O'Neal) and officer Kerwin (John Hurt) have to partner up in order to investigate the murder of a gay man whose father is the head of the city newspaper. They couldn't be any different as Benson is the macho, womanizing type and Kerwin is a slight and neurotic homosexual. But they've been thrown together because they have to infiltrate the gay community and the only way to do that is having them both pose as lovers. Yeah, it's about as un-P.C. a set-up as you'd expect from an early 80's movie.

So they set up "house" in the district and start to look into the case. Here Veber tries to derive most of his humour from O'Neal's characters discomfort of being where he is and acting how he is. He's having a hard enough time acting gay and things aren't helped by the fact that photographer Jill (Robyn Douglass) has caught his eye but has no idea he actually likes women. It's during the early moments of O'Neal and Hurt acting like a couple that I sensed a "Three's Company" vibe to the entire thing which isn't that much of a surprise since director James Burrows has spent a good portion of his career directing sitcoms - in fact, much of Partners feels like it could belong on national television save for the liberal use of the word "faggot" throughout the movie.

Amongst all the 'fish out of water' shenanigans they do attempt to add in some murder mystery elements but they're pretty slim and secondary to the interplay between our two lead actors. And while Douglass is pretty wasted as a love interest (and eventual suspect), it's Hurt and O'Neal who keep things watchable. O'Neal plays the macho man who's forced to wear pink constantly (apparently the colour automatically signified "gay" in the 80's) and isn't bad switching between male bravura and uncomfortable looks, meanwhile Hurt is just effeminate enough in his role to be quite fun to watch. Also on hand as one of our potential victims is Martin Kove who b-movie fans will know from such fare as The Last House on the Left as well as the first three Karate Kid movies.

Watching Partners over twenty-five-years after its release you can see it was definitely a product of its time. It plays heavily on stereotypes and uses slurs that are unacceptable in this day and age but at the same time, surprisingly, doesn't treat its homosexual characters as one-note jokes - Hurt's character is the most likeable person here even. It's an interesting companion piece to William Friedkin's controversial (and, very loosely, similar) Cruising, even if it doesn't stay consistently funny and starts to drag in the final third once the mystery elements take front stage. (Chris Hartley, 1/22/09)

Directed By: James Burrows.
Written By: Francis Veber.

Starring: Ryan O'Neal, John Hurt, Kenneth McMillan, Robyn Douglass.

Picture Ratio: 1.78:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: Another of Paramount's back catalogue hits DVD courtesy of Legend Films but Partners is the weakest looking of the ones I've seeen so far. While the clarity is okay the print used here is pretty dirty with lots of specking early on and throughout. There's also some grainy moments. It looks better than you'd see on VHS or cable but it's just not as good as some of their other offerings.

Extras: As with most of these re-issues from Legend, there's nothing but the movie and menus. Which is fine since a lot of these titles wouldn't come out on DVD otherwise.

Visit Legend Films for more info.