The first reviews of V for Vendetta are coming in, and while Ebert & Roeper give it both their thumbs up, other reviewers haven't been as kind. Jeff Giles of Newsweek calls it "a lackluster comic-book movie that thinks terrorist is a synonym for revolutionary," while Mark Kermode, writing for London's Observer, dubs it "a big-screen advertisement for anarchy in the UK" as part of a larger complaint against entertainments based on recent disasters. The harshest pre-release buzz, though, may come from David Denby at the New Yorker, who found the film a "dunderheaded pop fantasia" and practically wonders aloud why nobody set the Wachowski brothers straight before they wasted years and millions of dollars on such a boondoggle. Part of Denby's distaste for the film, though, is directed towards its source, the comic book created by Alan Moore and David Lloyd, and the antipathy its creators showed towards Thatcherite Britain:

"Moore, in an introduction to the book, insisted that 'the government has expressed a desire to eradicate homosexuality.' He also said that 'the tabloid press are circulating the idea of concentration camps for persons with AIDS.' As far as one can tell, Moore and Lloyd's work was fuelled by the British left's disgust with Thatcher's policies, combined with imaginary menaces culled from antic British tabloids."

As it happens, the idea of detention centers for the HIV-positive was a staple of American conspiracy theory which migrated over to England at some point, but even if we're willing to concede that as paranoid fantasy, the British government's homophobia was quite real. From 1988 to 2003, the United Kingdom had a law on the books, Section 28, which prohibited local authorities from "intentionally promot[ing] homosexuality or publish[ing] material with the intention of promoting homosexuality" or "promot[ing] the teaching in any maintained school of the acceptability of homosexuality as a pretended family relationship" (emphasis in that last bit mine). The law was passed in part because of the controversy caused by tabloid reports about a London school library owning a copy of Jenny lives with Eric and Martin—the Brit equivalent of Heather Has Two Mommies, one presumes. One wouldn't expect most Americans to know about this law, of course; I'm largely aware of it because I'm an Alan Moore fan who read the same attack Denby scoffs at twenty years ago, as well as the benefit comic Moore produced to raise funds for protests against the legislation. But it's surprising that a film expert like Denby doesn't recall that Section 28 was, in fact, the spur that brought Sir Ian McKellen out of the closet and inspired him to become perhaps the acting world's most prominent gay activist.