Zero Patience - the review

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Zero Patience
Zero Patience is a movie musical that has a researcher examining the life of the infamous Patient Zero, the Canadian flight attendent accused of introducing the Aids virus to North America.

A musical about Aids? A musical about Aids is a bit strange in 2006, it is hard to imagine what people thought of Zero Patience when it was released in 1993. Someone on youtube noted that Zero Patience was released a few YEARS prior to Rent appearing on Broadway. I didn't see Rent, so I have no idea how much of Rent was about Aids (nor how having Aids as a plot line "went over" in that musical).

There is some nice music in the movie Zero Patience. The music in the movie sounds more Country/Western than Broadway. There is a music video of the title song, Zero Patience.

I think it is important to keep in mind that Zero Patience was made for a Canadian audience. Some key decisions about Zero Patience, that make the movie only so-so to me, appear to have been made to appeal to Canadians. For example, the decision to have the story told through "a certain character" appears to be based on longstanding English v French rivalry in Canada; the story is told through the character Sir Richard Francis Burton (an old English anthropologist).

Richard Francis Burton is apparently famous/infamous for doing penis studies comparing English men to African men. In the movie, Richard Francis Burton says that he published a report saying that homosexuality had to have first evolved in a "warm climate" so as not to offend the English.

At one point in the movie, Richard Francis Burton pitches the idea to the Curator of the Museum he works for about doing a documentary blaming a Canadian for introducing Aids to North America. The Museum Curator is hesitant about backing such a documentary until he learns that the Canadian in question was a "FRENCH" Canadian.

I think that Zero Patience would have been a better movie WITHOUT the Richard Francis Burton character.

I liked Zero Patience. I think Zero Patience is worth seeing. There are two "stand-out" scenes in Zero Patience that ARE really funny:

1. The Butt Duet;
2. The scene in which a stuffed version of the type of "Green Monkey" comes to life in human form. In the movie, the Green Monkey is a Lesbian leather biker and she says: "I don't do boys". The Green Monkey is accused of being the source of the Aids Virus.

The film is serves as a refutation of the urban legend of the alleged introduction of AIDS to North America by a single individual, Gaëtan Dugas, better known as Patient Zero. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero_Patience

The actor who played "Sandovol" in the tv series "Earth: Final Conflic"appears in Zero Patience in a musical number toward the end of the movie.

A Zero Patience Prods. Ltd. presentation, produced with the participation of Telefilm Canada and Ontario Film Development Corp. in association with Channel Four Television, U.K., with the assistance of Cineplex Odeon Films Canada/Ontario Arts Council/Canada Council/Canadian Film Centre/The CRB Foundation. Produced by Louise Garfield, Anna Stratton. Executive producer, Alexandra Raffe. Directed, written by John Greyson. http://www.variety.com/review/VE1117907568...mp;cs=1&p=0

Sir Richard Burton - John Robinson
Zero - Normand Fauteux
Mary - Dianne Heatherington
George - Richardo Keens-Douglas
Dr. Placebo - Bernard Behrens
Monkey - Maria Lukofsky
Miss HIV - Michael Callen
Maman - Charlotte Boisjoli
Dr. Cheng - Brenda Kamino