Partners (1982 film)

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Partners
Directed by	James Burrows
Produced by	Aaron Russo Francis Veber
Written by	Francis Veber
Starring	Ryan O'Neal John Hurt
Music by	Georges Delerue
Editing by	Danford B. Greene Stephen Lovejoy
Distributed by	Paramount Pictures
Release date(s)	April 30, 1982
Running time	93 min
Language	English
IMDb profile

Partners is a gay-themed buddy comedy from 1982. It stars Ryan O'Neal and John Hurt as a mismatched pair of cops. After a series of murders in the Los Angeles gay community, heterosexual police sergeant Benson (O'Neal) is assigned to the case. He is ordered to go undercover as half of a gay couple. The other half of the couple is Officer Kerwin (Hurt), a records clerk who everyone in the department knows is gay although he thinks he's closeted.

The film derives much of its alleged humor from Benson's discomfort with homosexuality and his stereotypical ideas of "gay behaviour." The film does deserve some small measure of credit for showing the evolution of Benson's attitudes toward Kerwin and by extension gay people in general, although upon its release Partners was near-universally reviled by critics. Critical reaction was perhaps best summed up by Rex Reed, who wrote for the New York Post, "Hollywood's latest crime against humanity in general and homosexuals in particular is a dumb creepshow called Partners - stupid, tasteless and homophobic, this sleazy, superficial film implies that gay cops can't be trusted to work with straight cops because they might fall in love with them."