The Boys in the Band

The Boys in the Band takes place in 1968 in New York, where a group of gay friends gather at an apartment to celebrate a birthday. Their host, Michael, has organized the party for Harold, though Harold is slow to arrive. A last-minute guest, Michael's college friend Alan, unsettles the mood, and as the evening wears on and the drinking continues past midnight, long-suppressed tensions, resentments and personal pain push the friendships toward open confrontation.

The film is based on Mart Crowley's play, adapted for the screen by Crowley and Ned Martel, and it is directed by Joe Mantello. It continues Mantello's move into filmmaking after earlier work on television; this was the second feature film he had directed, following a 1997 debut. The cast is led by Jim Parsons as Michael and Zachary Quinto as Harold, alongside Matt Bomer, Andrew Rannells, Michael Benjamin Washington and Robin de Jesús. Ryan Murphy produced for his company Ryan Murphy Productions.

The film runs 122 minutes. On IMDb, viewers rate it 6.8 from roughly 19,000 votes. On TMDB the rating is also 6.8, from about 464 votes, and the critics' score stands higher at 7.4 from 101 reviews, so critics received it more warmly than the general audience did.