Zero Patience is provocative, engaging and indeed, an important film. It is an accessible way to be introduced to many issues regarding AIDS. However, this musical is never very engaging. The main fault of this is the music itself, which is dated and irking.

The plot and characters of Zero Patience are involving enough. Too bad the rhythm of the film keeps getting interrupted by musical numbers that don't really seem to fit and are not very entertaining. These pieces fall flat in terms of conception and seem to want to be campier than they actually are.

In summary: it's an important movie about AIDS that was sloppily conceived.

The ghost of Zero - "patient zero", who allegedly first brought AIDS to Canada - materializes and tries to contact old friends. Meanwhile, the Victorian explorer Sir Richard Burton, who drank from the Fountain of Youth and now works as Chief Taxidermist at the Toronto Natural History Museum, is trying to organize an AIDS exhibition.

The mainstream Austin Chronicle cited a "murky plot, frequently weak acting and often mediocre music" while still praising the film's "spunk, humor, enthusiasm and wit." This is pretty much it. The film itself is not very good, though you can see it was striving for something bigger and better. Then again, by having your lead be a time-displaced scientist, how seriously can we take it?

The Washington Post compared Zero Patience unfavorably to Hollywood's big-budget, big-star AIDS-themed film, Philadelphia, claiming that the latter's protagonist, Andrew Beckett, "looked sick, dealt with his illness and allowed the audience to sympathize," unlike the "healthy hoofers" of the musical who, because they didn't look sick enough, seem "to deny some of the grim realities" of the disease. Now, I don't know that the two films can be compared, but I do agree that the film seemed to promote sexuality without accepting any of the negative aspects... dispelling the "patient zero" myth is a good thing, but it doesn't mean we can go back to our bad habits!