6/10 One of the many overrated Oscar bait films that critics loved but that doesn’t hold up to scrutiny, “Call Me by Your Name” is decent in several respects but ultimately falls short. The best thing about the film is the acting from the entire ensemble cast. Armie Hammer is very talented but has been in a lot of box office duds that haven’t shown his true potential. Timothée Chalamet is extremely impressive but that is also because he has only had smaller, bit parts in films and now he finally has a leading role where we get to see his talent shine through. Finally, Michael Stuhlbarg, whom I find to be very underrated, continues his consistently amazing work and for having the least screen time between the three mentioned roles, does the most to stand out to me. Besides the stellar acting, the soundtrack is also very beautiful and more importantly, sets the mood and tone of the film to keep you in the right mindset. There are also some very strong emotional moments that tug on the heart strings, particularly the scene near the end of the film with Michael Stuhlbarg consoling his son and talking to him about love and heartbreak. As for the negatives, the biggest comes with the overall story/plot. Whereas other gay themed films like the excellent “Brokeback Mountain” and the great but overrated “Moonlight” have our protagonists struggling with real conflict (i.e.- homophobic characters wishing to harm them for being gay or family/friends/society not approving of their lifestyle or characters being married and struggling to be married to a woman when they love a man, etc.) but “Call Me by Your Name” has no sense of real conflict or struggle. Our protagonist is supported by his family for who he is and there is never any real sense of danger if they get discovered, especially with them being in Europe where the homosexual lifestyle is more widely accepted. This makes the film boring in some respects due to a lack of tension. A more, exciting, well written story could have pushed this decent film to something great but by the time the credits rolled I couldn’t help but want for more and think, “That was it?”
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