Did you know that a “straight-acting” Kansas farm boy threw the first brick in the riot that sparked the modern gay-rights movement? News to me, and probably most other New Yorkers.
Roland Emmerich’s seriously misjudged “Stonewall” turns the transgender drag queens who helped change America into dress extras in what’s basically a Big Apple retelling of “The Wizard of Oz” revolving around a Caucasian gay man’s coming of age.
Already accepted to Columbia University, teenage Danny (Jeremy Irvine) is kicked out of town by his football-coach dad after his high school teammates see him servicing the team’s hunky quarterback.
Danny’s sleeping on a park bench in Sheridan Square when Hispanic transgender Ramona (Jonny Beauchamp) invites him to share a crash pad with his flamboyant pals (all played by non-trans actors) on Christopher Street.
Ramona has a crush on clean-cut Danny, whose own taste in men runs more toward Trevor (Jonathan Rhys Meyers), a ripped gay-rights activist he meets at the Stonewall Inn. That’s the soon-to-be-infamous mob-owned drag bar managed by Murphy (Ron Perlman), who has half the officers at the Sixth Precinct on his payroll so he can disappear during police raids, where his customers are arrested and/or humiliated for wearing women’s clothing.
Danny learns he’s not in Kansas anymore while turning tricks to support himself and getting beaten by leering cops while cruising the Meatpacking District. Nevertheless, Emmerich keeps returning to the Midwest for flashbacks, as well as for a lengthy epilogue.
Back at the Stonewall, the NYPD’s public morals squad led by Inspector Pine (Matt Craven) stages an unscheduled raid while the regulars are mourning the death of Judy Garland. They’ve finally had enough, and their battle with the cops is the best-staged part of the film — even if the realistically detailed Sheridan Square set at a Montreal studio looks notably smaller than the real thing.
Emmerich — a hugely successful director of disaster movies who happens to be gay — deserves credit for trying to call attention to the plight of gay homeless youth in this self-financed, if seriously flawed, labor of love. But with thinly drawn characters, uneven performances and tin-eared dialogue, “Stonewall’’ plays at best like a musical without the songs.