It doesn’t really matter what the general public thinks of Gus Van Sant’s new film Milk, chronicling the life of gay activist Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to major public office in the U.S. It hits theaters guaranteed to clean up at Oscar time and the critical reception is . . . well, here’s Ann Hornaday at the Washington Post:

Once in a while, a movie arrives at such a perfect moment, its message and meaning so finely tuned to the current zeitgeist, that it seems less a cinematic event than a cosmic convergence, willed into being by a once-in-a-lifetime alignment of the stars.

Aside from the embarrassing hyperbole, the suggestion that the movie “arrives at such a perfect moment” is laughable, given that gay-rights activists and film-industry types complained about the movie being released after Election Day and the California decision on Proposition 8.

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“[I] can’t help but wonder what Milk might have meant for today’s cause, if anything, had it landed in the marketplace last month,” wrote one blogger at popular film website In Contention. The Hollywood Reporter sparked furor with a story claiming that Focus Features, the studio releasing Milk, was “eschewing publicity for the gay-themed movie” because it was afraid the Prop 8 controversy would hurt the film’s chances — a claim that prompted an angry denial from Focus head James Schamus, the producer of Brokeback Mountain.

In other words, there was a lot of debate pre-release about whether the film had a sufficiently political agenda. Well, it does: the entire last act centers on Harvey Milk’s activism against Proposition 6, a 1978 initiative which would have banned gay teachers in California schools. The film is at pains to drive home parallels between Prop 6 and Prop 8, historically relevant or not. In reality, Proposition 6 was a poorly written law that that would have effectively legalized witch hunts, banning teachers who even supported other gay teachers. Both Jimmy Carter and sensible conservatives led by former governor Ronald Reagan opposed the law, which ultimately failed at the ballot. In terms of its legislative absurdity and popular support, Prop 6 and Prop 8 aren’t really comparable.

So Milk is a highly charged political film, which seems to have distracted people like Ann Hornaday from asking more relevant questions. Is it a good movie? Does it fairly represent Harvey Milk’s life and accomplishments? The answers to those questions are maybe and absolutely not, respectively.

Not all of the hype over the film is unjustified. The cinematography successfully evokes San Francisco in the 1970s, and the cast is uniformly excellent. Too often, actors play gay roles with overdone affectation; here, Penn disappears into the title role and turns in an incredible performance. Penn isn’t known for being a likable character on screen or off — but as Harvey Milk, he’s charismatic and disarming. He’s also buoyed by a series of excellent supporting performances from James Franco, Diego Luna, and Emile Hirsch, among others. Doubtless, you will hear more about the film’s performances as awards season nears.

But the strength of the film’s performances and the zeal that has greeted the film’s politics seems to have distracted everyone from noticing that the script is remarkably weak. Screenwriter Dustin Lance Black — a former Mormon who’s now out and proud — is a hot Hollywood commodity on the strength of Milk, and it boggles the mind why.

The film borrows most of its structure — centering on the real-life, tape-recorded message Milk left behind in the event that he was killed — from the 1984 documentary, The Life and Times of Harvey Milk. The final scene, in which Milk is assassinated by one of his fellow San Francisco city supervisors is the hamfisted and melodramatic culmination of a lazy and obvious series of references to Milk’s love of opera that one can see coming a mile away. Telegraphed punches rarely land with force.

Further, the film repeatedly speculates, without any evidence whatsoever, that Milk’s financially ruined and mentally unstable assassin is a closeted homosexual. In ascribing motive, its plot resorts to a tiresome and baseless pop-culture meme that anyone opposed to homosexuality — or even to a story’s gay protagonist — must be a “closet case.” (Not that I expect the meme to die anytime soon; look for Haggard to land in theaters the next time a major gay-rights initiative is on a state ballot.)

The script sidesteps any and all moral dilemmas that might arise from examining, well, the life and times of the Harvey Milk — a man who was as polarizing as he was charismatic. Milk is less a biopic than a hagiography. Which is unfortunate.