Cloudburst

Really! Olympia Dukakis and Brenda Fricker portray lesbians that have been in my life, foul mouth and all. To those who says this movie is not 100% realistic, well, thank heavens for that! These characters are real enough and the humor is great. The real life consequences of getting old, living as unmarried, unrecognized partners is very real and can be very painful. And those issues are brought forth with irony, clarity, raunchiness and loving tenderness. Just like life.

The young hitchhiker character was endearing, bringing another additional layer of the complexity of human relationships into the mix. This movie is lighthearted at times, laughing out loud funny here and there, and dramatizes the struggles of being homosexual, elderly, and being authentically out of the norm.

It has been a long time since I have enjoyed a movie as much as I did when I watched Cloudburst last summer. My daughter and I watched it together and we laughed and cried all the way through it. I had not heard anything about the show before seeing it and it was a thrill to be so surprised at how great the show was. While all of the cast played their parts wonderfully, my favourite character was Ryan Doucette and I look forward to seeing him in many more future movies. I hope it comes out on video so I can buy a copy to add to my home collection. I can't wait to watch it again. Thank you for such great entertainment and keep up the great work Ryan.

The brief synopsis of this story is that it's about two old lesbians living in Maine who pick up a hitchhiker. That's not a very good synopsis. This movie is about two people who have loved each other and lived together for 31 years. Age and a selfish granddaughter threaten to end the relationship so these two octogenarian ladies decide to run away in an old, red pickup truck through the back roads of Maine to Canada where they can be married. Along the way they pick up a young, male hitchhiker who happens to be a modern/exotic dancer from New York. This trio then takes an unlikely road trip with a series of misadventures and adventures through the beautifully photographed landscape of eastern Canada.

Olympia Dukakis plays a role you might never expect to see: a crusty old lesbian with the mouth of the saltiest sailor. She is magnificent. Brenda Fricker plays the blind, wise old woman. You root for her every step of the way. A very funny Ryan Doucette plays the hitchhiker. You'd never know this was his first movie.

This movie places everything you expect from a romantic comedy/drama and pours it into new vessels not previously used to hold this vintage. The movie has already played in theaters in every country but the US. In the US, the Lifetime cable channel purchased it, so the language is not likely to survive un-bleeped. Not to worry, it appears on DVD in July, 2013 so you can see it as the author intended: sweet, salty, and well done. (We just saw this movie in San Jose, CA as part of the Camera Cinema Club.)

(TLDR: I definitely recommend watching this.)

The title sums up my initial thought about the movie - a lesbian COMEDY? A lighthearted lesbian movie where nobody goes to conversion therapy camp and nobody cheats on their husband? Nobody goes through a traumatic coming out to their family and friends which then Have a Hard Time? Wild, unbelievable.

Hold your horses if you got too excited by this crazy occurence though - we couldn't do without at least one typical lgbt-movie thing - It's an lgbt themed movie so of course someone dies (not tagging as spoiler because honestly - you most likely already knew that, this is how common this is).

Also there's a weird ammount of naked men in this for a movie about lesbians.

I liked the raunchy over the top, brainless humor - it's just really not something you get enough of for this type of movies. Something you Also don't get a lot of is portrayals of gay people which are older than like, 20, and actually had a decent life in a stable relationship. We need more movies like this, more normal movies which are not all striving to be High Art and talking about how being gay is a tragedy that will Ruin Your Life Forever. Not because those grim movies are not relatable - they ARE relatable for most lgbt people and that's the problem.

This is a cute movie that's just something random you can watch with a popcorn and not have an existential crisis over. So cheers to that and I'm hoping for more movies like this. Taking away the two stars for some cringy moments, and the "wait it's gay so someone has to die".

Loved this movie. Contrary to the other reviewer who found Olympia Dukakis' character offensive I thought she was wonderful. She was playing a character. She wasn't representing all lesbians. Yes it was over the top but I think the humanity of her character came through in spite of the swearing and 'bull dyke' representation. I think that the other character's grand daughter not realizing she was a lesbian was a bigger stretch than Olympia's character. I also thought that the relationship between the two main characters was very realistic whether you wanted to accept their characterizations or not. I actually went to this movie not expecting much and really just wanted to see Olympia Dukakis. I came out of the movie laughing, crying and uplifted by a story of love that is universal and eternal. I am sorry if you didn't want to accept a lesbian who wears vests, cowboy hats, drinks tequila and swears like a sailor but they do exist and so what? Who cares? Love is love. If you want to laugh and cry and believe that everyone should have the right to marry the person they love no matter what then go see this movie. If you are easily offended by a bull dyke characterization of an elderly lesbian then you may want to skip it but you will be missing a real treat.