Director Roland Emmerich once blew up the White House with a giant alien spaceship. In retrospect this was one of his subtler moments. Stonewall, an outrageously misjudged drama that flirts with the story of the birth of the gay rights movement, is much more grandiose.

Jeremy Irvine stars as Danny, a clean cut farm kid living in 1960s Indiana. He’s young and guileless, desperately in love with his football team-mate. When their relationship is discovered Danny is exiled by his schoolmates and evicted by his parents. He strikes out for New York and a theme park vision of the gay hangouts on Greenwich Village’s Christopher Street, where a kid called Ray (Jonny Beauchamp) co-opts him into his gang of hustlers. Each has a little quirk that passes for character development. Orphan Annie (Caleb Landry Jones) has a beatnik thing going on, Cong (Vladimir Alexis) robs and make his own clothes, Quiet Paul (Ben Sullivan) doesn’t say much. They are, to a man, cinematically freaky and fabulous.

The gang gravitate around The Stonewall Inn, a mob-owned bar that was regularly raided by the police. In June 1969 one such raid sparked riots by the patrons that lasted several days. The uprising would lead to the spread of an organised gay rights movement and the first Pride marches. None of that seems to matter much in the film. The riots are squashed into one violent clash, sparking so late in the film that you forget that’s why we’re here.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Watch the Stonewall trailer

Stonewall has been billed as the story of a young gay man’s political awakening, but Danny - the sweet-natured wally - takes an age to stir himself. Along his path to revolution he’s beaten by the police, forced to turn tricks for money, lost in love (in the form of a Mattachine Society campaigner played by Jonathan Rhys Meyers) and pulled sharply out of it again before he even considers his civil rights. Ray, given some grace by Beaucoup, despite the character’s hysteria, races around him screaming about the need to respect their adopted family. The riots are tucked away in the last 20 minutes, delivered almost as an after-thought to Danny’s character development.

A cluster of subplots – police corruption, Ray’s love for Danny, Danny’s grief over losing his first fling – crowd for attention. The pop culture references (Danny’s sister’s Andy Warhol obsession, Ray’s – inevitable – Judy Garland fixation) are broad and obstructive too. Sex, when it pops up, is given to us brief and coy. The men talk about it lots, but do it rarely. If it’s shown it’s in the shadows and quickly turned away from. This is not a film for shyness: for once, physically intimacy is key to plot. There’s not enough of it and the struggle is therefore undermined.

It’s still difficult for gay cinema to pass into the mainstream. Emmerich, who put his own money into making the film, should be cheered for giving it a shot. Unfortunately the compromises he’s made leave Stonewall feeling neutered. A member of the Mattachine Society makes a speech about how gay men should assimilate. “Wearing a suit and tie will make them realise they’re just like you,” he says. Stonewall tries the same trick. By trying to disguise itself as a coming-of-age romance, it hides the real story underneath.