Customer Reviews
Excellent - By: GJ Botha, 12 May 2008 
One of the best films I have seen this year. I was hesitant & the negative reviews prevented me from bying the DVD for some time. I am very happy I finally took the plunge.
Hysterical but thoughful too. - By: squeeze, 11 May 2008 Cant understand the few negative reviews on here. Aside from the explicit opening scenes, which themselves are cleverly edited & intercut, there is a hysterical rendition of the star spangled banner later on with ingenious use of (male) body parts. Admitedly you'd have to be pretty broadminded to enjoy this film, but this is defintely not porn. The acting is of a very high calibre, the script is witty & the direction is excellent. I'd love to see the sequel. I'd also be interested to see these actorsin a mainstream film just to see what they can really do. The extra features on this DVD set are also worth a look.
Brilliant film, great dvd - By: Mr. H. Earle, 10 Jan 2008 Film 5 stars for interest, originality, daring, honesty & technical execution.
DVD 4 stars for price, design, extras - deleted scenes & making of.
4.5 rounds up to 5!
A 'Footloose' for the post-9/11 audience - By: lexo1941, 17 Dec 2007 
For anyone who was wondering what 'Hedwig & the Angry Inch'-meister John Cameron Mitchell had been up to since that film came out, well, he was making this little baby. Shortbus is billed as being shocking, sexually explicit & whatever else, but while it may be the most sexually explicit 'mainstream' movie I've ever seen (the opening sequence intercuts between a man pleasuring himselfin a uniquely gymnastic way & a cute multi-racial couple having very noisy & athletic sex all over their apartment) it's not meant to be shocking at all.
It's actually a rather sweet story on that fine old theme of American movies: Sex is Good for You. Perhaps the classic expression of this theme during my adolescence was Kevin Bacon introducing the delights of dancing to his uptight small town schoolmates; we all knew that dancing was really a metaphor for gettin' it on. Mitchell is not inhibited by convention, & focuses his story on the tale of Sofia (Sook-Yin Lee), a sex therapist ('I prefer the term Couples Counsellor') who has a lot of sex with her husband but who has never had an orgasm. Mitchell said that he noticed that a lot of sexually explicit films were coming out of Europe recentlyin which the sex was pretty bleak and/or depressing (probably thinking of kind of interesting but basically dispiriting movies like 'Intimacy' & 'Nine Songs'); being an American, he wanted to tell a more cheerful story.
This film has more erect penisesin it than I, as a straight man, have ever seen gathered togetherin one movie. But the film isn't ultimately about showing you lots of sex; the story is told through the sex, demanding total commitment from the fine cast. It's a warm, funny & touching story about the value of community. As the increasingly frustrated Sofia, Lee (a popular Canadian radio personality, apparently) is both adorable & gifted with sharp comic timing. Lindsay Beamish is splendid as a glum dominatrix, & the rest of the cast is very good. Special stars for Alan Mandell as a former mayor of New York bearing a startling resemblance to one famous bachelor who had that job, & Shanti Carlson who plays one half of the Beautiful Couple that represents everything Lee's character doesn't have; one of the emotional high points of the film is a look Carlson throws Lee across the room during a particularly heated orgy. There wasn't a dry eyein the living room.
Heartwarming, really. You just have to be prepared to watch a lot of men & women having sex with each otherin pretty much every permutation imaginable. (Director Mitchell, a lifelong homosexual, played a 'sextra' during the orgy sequence and, as an 'act of solidarity', reportedly got intimate with a woman for the first timein his life.)
I honesty liked this film! - By: sugar_heart, 11 Nov 2007 I had itin my mind that since i wasnt a big fan of 'Hedwig' i wasnt going to like this, well i was wrong.
Ok the whole sex thing that eveyone seems to want to see this for is really non-existent. The only real shocking parts are at the beginning & then the story kicks in. I was totally hooked on this film all the way through but felt that even though i enjoyed it the characters could have been a little better some of them didnt quite have much of a story. The whole layout of the film was great & i enjoyed the artyness.
I thought this was more of a girls film than for guys. But it depends on what you like i suppose. I'll certainly give it another watch.
