Johns is a bargain basement version of Gus Van Sant's classic My Own Private Idaho, a story about two gay prostitutes trying to get enough money so that one can fulfill his fantasy of a night stay at a five star hotel with all the fringe benefits of room service. By the way that particular plot device dates all the way back to Paramount's If I Had A Million where Wynne Gibson gets that million dollar check and the first thing she does is register in a swank hotel where she served as a fringe benefit just for a night's sleep alone.Johns even begins the way My Own Private Idaho ends where some people stole the shoes off of a sleeping narcoleptic River Phoenix. In this case David Arquette is sleeping in a park and someone robs his lucky Puma sneakers off his feet. They're more than good luck to him, he keeps his money there.The footwear get replaced, from his next client Arquette steals a pair of golf shoes that the client had in the back of his car. Making that money back won't be so easy as Arquette owed a drug dealer as well.David Arquette is the veteran street kid and new to the scene is Lukas Haas who as too many are in real life, kicked out of his house because he came out as gay. Lukas is kind of crushing out on David. Arquette likes him well enough, but like Keanu Reaves vis a vis River Phoenix in My Own Private Idaho, he's a hard case who can't let anything that will soften him insofar as dealing with the mean streets and those who walk them.Johns is a decent enough film, that rises and succeeds on the performances of leads Arquette and Haas. The two are appealing on many different levels.This is not a feel good movie, but a rather stern look at an underside of gay life that we don't want to acknowledge. But if someone sees it who is prevented from disowning his child because of his or her sexual orientation, the film will have been worth being made.

This was a sorry, pathetic excuse of a film. Nothing, from the opening title sequence, to the characters, to even the paper-thin story, was worth redeeming or recognizable as value. Several reviews have argued the point that perhaps director Scott Silver (of The Mod Squad fame) should have done a bit of research on the life of a male prostitute instead of just allowing David Arquette the freedom of just jumping around and screaming to show the hardships of "reality". I couldn't agree more. I felt cheated and confused as I watched this elongated 24-hour period erupt chaotically into several convoluted themes and unsecured elements. There was never a moment in this film to feel for our characters. There was never a moment in this film for us, the audience members, to feel what living on the streets of LA involved. There was never a moment in this film for us to see the pain that Arquette or Haas experienced on a daily basis. Why was there never a moment? There was never this moment because Silver was too busy using cliché elements to force us to like Arquette as a character. Silver continually forced Arquette's empathy and tribulations onto us thinking that seeing a Hollywood actor playing a gruff street urchin would immediately force us to break into tears and bow at the mercy of this flawed character. How pathetic.What should have unfolded during the course of this film was a chance for us to see the underbelly that LA attempts to hide. There should have been more hardships aimed toward Arquette that would have developed into sympathetic moments. A tragic character allows audience members to connect freely, while a forced character, like the one seen in Johns, makes us fall asleep, feel apathetic, and overly pressured. It nearly seemed that during the course of this film Arquette could have run for Mayor of the homeless if he would have pushed himself a bit further. Arquette's final version of his character reminded me of an annoying politician instead of a homeless person. He was shaking hands with everyone, becoming a stronger part of the street's culture, whether the street wanted it or not. Never was it apparent that he was upset with his current living situation. It was never made apparent that he wanted to escape the life that he had created. So, when the unstructured ending finally occurred, it boggled my mind. Arquette, or maybe it was Silver, made his character do things that I believe he would not have done in real life. John (Arquette's character) would have not fallen asleep as shown in the beginning of the film once he had his birthday money in hand. John would not have easily thrown his dream into the trash, as stated, but instead worked throughout the film to make it a reality.Silver's inclusion of Donner (Lucas Haas) into the script only brought the story further into the dismal zone. Donner is a random target. Silver makes Donner stronger than John and I do not think that is a fair assessment. Whatever Donner wants, he gets, no matter how that hurts John. Donner is not the "good friend" that we all assume throughout the course of the film. In fact, I believe that we could have done without this "friend" and just watched the course of John in this one day period. Donner takes John's heart, his dreams, and nearly places him in trouble, and we are to assume that Donner was about to save him from this disappointing life? I didn't buy it. Secondly, did anyone else have trouble with the fact that Arquette and Haas were the two worst male prostitutes ever filmed? Not that I have any experience with male prostitutes, but it felt as if each time either of these two "professionals" got into cars with clients, they had quite a "no" mentality. This led to my impression that these two characters were not just weak, mismatched, and underdriven, but also lazy. Silver successfully created two of the laziest male prostitutes to ever grace the silver screen. I guess we cannot knock him for completely failing in this film.Finally, I would like to say that Silver had a boatload of opportunity with this film. The talent (perhaps outside of Arquette) was present on the screen, sadly, they just didn't do anything. Keith David, Nicky Katt, Terrance Howard, Elliot Gould, and even John C. McGinley kept this film watchable, but with the counterpoints leading back to Arquette it only worsened the overall feeling of the film. Even these independent heavy-hitters couldn't save this little ditty of a production. We needed emotion and heartache instead of the suppressed anger we felt when dealing with the stereotypical generalization of these characters. Silver didn't create an original body of work, but instead took cliché moments from other cinematic features and called them his own. Throw in a spaz-tastic lead, and you have what I like to call a little film named Johns.This was not worth the DVD it was printed on. I normally don't mind general independent films being made to tell a story about the hardships of living in America, but what I do mind is when they cast decent actors and give them horrible parts, or surround them in a horrible story, or just do not allow them to blossom. Arquette hurt this film by not fully embracing the character or the realism of the life that follows these certain individuals. Lukas Haas completely embodied this film with his character. Poorly developed and randomly tangent. This was a poor film and I do not recommend it to even the novice of cinema fanatics.Grade: * out of *****

I'm actually a big fan of this movie and consider it to be quite underrated. By now anyone who bothers to read these reviews knows the plot, so I won't waste your time with yet another synopsis. Instead, I'll just explain certain aspects of this film which make it in my book a genuinely solid and touching picture.First off, the emotional rapport between David Arquette and Lukas Haas is just lovely: loose, natural and totally unaffected, the chemistry between these two is very credible and engaging. Moreover, the supporting cast all turn in bang-up performances. Elliott Gould was extraordinary in his brief, yet startling appearance as an in-the-closet married gay man with a wife and kids. You don't know whether to laugh or cry at the sight of this pathetic guy; it's this peculiar complexity Gould projects which makes his cameo so striking and unforgettable. Richard Kind as a compassionate hotel clerk brings a truly sweet and appealing warmth to his part. But the real revelation here is Keith David as a kindly and protective "angelic" homeless man. Usually cast in intimidating tough guy parts, David gets a rare chance to show a more soft and sensitive side that I especially enjoyed seeing. And to hear David sing a forlorn gospel song in that magnificent liquid bass during the ending credits constitutes as a substantial extra treat! Arliss Howard turns in a thoroughly creepy and compelling characterization as a man whose severely repressed homosexuality manifests itself as pure psychotic rage.The other thing in the movie that warrants additional kudos is the stupendous blues score by noted blues musician Charles Brown; it perfectly captures the downbeat tone of film and exudes a sense of bleakness and despair that's in itself very powerful. The gritty, no-frills, washed-out cinematography likewise accurately pegs a deep-seated feeling of grungy sordidness and hopelessness as well, although those constant fades to black struck me as a rather annoying stylistic flourish that's jarringly at odds with the basic gritty realism. The somewhat telegraphed ending may be predictable, but it's still very devastating. Furthermore, I give the film bonus points for having the strength of its own bitter convictions; there's no fake "everything works out" Hollywood happy ending. And the occasional moments of darkly funny humor are neatly incorporated into the overall film; they add some much-needed levity and stop the movie from becoming too unbearably depressing. All in all, "Johns" sizes up as a sound indie picture that warrants a second look and reappraisal.

Only if you're a David Arquette or Lukas Haas fan will you really enjoy this movie. In fact, Lukas is very well cast as the black sheep of the family turned male prostitute. It drags in places but I think director Scott Silver set out to capture the sordidness and lonliness of your average L.A. hustler, so in that case it's very believable. But the film does call for a long attention span. One of the best scenes, and oddly touching was with Elliot Gould, terrific as always, as the client drawn away from his tête à tête with John to handle his family man duties. But other than that, the film seems rather pointless and to call it "Midnight Cowboy for the 90's" is really hyping it.