![]() ![]() Williams ("Boardwalk Empire,""The Wire") as African-American community organizer Ken Jones and Ivory Aquino as transgender-activist Cecilia Chung. Confidential") as LGBT activist Cleve Jones, Mary-Louise Parker ("Weeds," "Angels in America") as women's rights leader Roma Guy, Rachel Griffiths ( Brothers and Sisters, Six Feet Under) as her wife, social justice activist Diane, Michael K. Starring in the mini-series are Guy Pearce ("Memento," "L.A. Civil Rights movement, from its turbulent infancy in the 20th century to the once unfathomable successes of today. This mini-series event chronicles the real-life personal and political struggles, set-backs and triumphs of a diverse family of LGBT men and women who helped pioneer one of the last legs of the U.S. THE TVLINE BOTTOM LINE: Despite good intentions, When We Rise‘s dull, didactic take on the gay-rights movement doesn’t do it justice."When We Rise" was written and created by Academy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black. It sets out to be the comprehensive historical record of gay rights in America, but its unwieldy structure and clumsy writing make it more of a footnote. Ultimately, though, When We Rise is what it is. While watching When We Rise, I kept thinking of all the other ways I’d rather see this story told: Maybe if they focused on one activist’s story or one time period, or maybe if it was on cable, or maybe if they scrapped the script and just made a documentary instead. Rather than a living, breathing story, it feels like homework - and at eight hours, a lot of it. (Pearce’s Cleve even chides a young interviewer in 2006: “Your generation is asleep.”) But Black’s determination leads to an overly ambitious narrative that tries to force-feed us huge volumes of gay history without giving us a reason to care. Writer Dustin Lance Black is in his element here - he won an Oscar for penning the 2008 Harvey Milk biopic Milk - and he’s clearly determined to educate today’s youth about the struggles their gay predecessors went through. After neglecting to establish who these characters are beyond their beliefs in the first two parts, the miniseries asks us to get invested in their internal struggles in the last two, and I started to long for the kinetic ’70s scenes again. And the plot slows to a crawl as Cleve, Roma and Ken’s stories turn from political to personal in the ’80s and ’90s, covering the AIDS crisis and the legal fight against California’s Prop 8. The older actors don’t resemble the younger ones at all, so their stories don’t feel as connected as they should. I hoped Parts 3 and 4, with the older actors taking over, would redeem When We Rise - but if anything, it gets worse. And When We Rise feels too sanitized for network TV, with chaste sex scenes and violence that never gets truly ugly. Their antagonists - disapproving parents, cops, gay-bashers - are all blockheaded villains with no hint of depth or nuance. ![]() But they’re all just walking, talking textbooks rather than fleshed-out human beings, rattling off exposition and making grand proclamations about their place in history. In the go-go ’70s, Cleve campaigns for doomed gay politician Harvey Milk, Roma battles for lesbian representation in the women’s-rights movement, and Ken comes to terms with being a black war veteran who’s also gay. Parts 1 and 2 only feature the younger versions of the characters in the ’70s and early ’80s, and play like one of those cheesy retro miniseries like NBC’s The ’60s, with shallow characterizations and too-obvious music cues. But those stars don’t show up until Part 3 of the miniseries, which means we have to get through four hours of prologue just to catch a glimpse of them. The older versions of Cleve (Guy Pearce), Roma (Mary-Louise Parker) and Ken (Michael Kenneth Williams) are played by recognizable stars, along with Rachel Griffiths as Roma’s girlfriend Diane. The Goldbergs' Wendi McLendon-Covey Opens Up About Co-Star Jeff Garlin's Exit: 'That Was a Long Time Coming' A Million Little Things Recap: Gary Confronts a Deep Family Rift for the Sake of His Infant Son ![]()
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