ed’s note: This article is based on the 2015 festival version of I Am Michael. Based on other reviews, the movie has not fundamentally changed in the 2 years between its dalliance on the festival circuit and its actual release this weekend. Please don’t make me watch it again.

Michael Glatze is a controversial figure in gay culture. He was an editor for XY Magazine, co-founder of the community group Young Gay America (and its spin-off magazine), and a die-hard gay activist for years. He spent years touring college campuses interviewing queer youth and letting their voices be heard through his activism. And then, he flipped. He had a health scare, dumped his boyfriend, found Jesus and became an virulent ex-gay who became a sort of figurehead for the ex-gay movement. Glatze’s blog had some nasty pieces of writing about the gay movement, and WorldNetDaily – the die-hard Christian Tea Party website where Victoria Jackson used to do hand-stands for the Tea Party – published some of his articles about the predatory nature of gay culture while extolling the virtues of Christianity (that have since been scrubbed, but the internet doesn’t forget, Michael). He even wrote an open letter to Ricky Martin trying to save his soul.

That was all about a decade ago. The first WorldNetDaily articles were back in 2007 when he was still feeling excited about his new-found religiosity. Since then, he became a figurehead for the ex-gay movement, and subsequently shunned by the ex-gay movement (after yet another meltdown). He married a woman in 2013, and has mellowed on his ex-gay virulency. He’s trying out more of a compassionate approach, but is still touting the heterosexuality through Christianity belief system (though without as much fire and brimstone condemnation).

Justin Kelly’s I Am Michael, which debuted at Sundance in 2015, is inspired by the 2011 New York Times Magazine article by Benoit Denizet-Lewis, My Ex-Gay Friend. In the article, Benoit tries to unpack Glatze and understand how one man can go from a loud-and-proud radical gay activist who screams that fundamentalist Christians are evil to being a fundamentalist Christian who says everybody is heterosexual and those who aren’t are lying to themselves. Benoit tries to put different identities on Glatze, trying to make him fit into an easier answer. An editor of XY remembers that Glatze’s homosexuality seemed to be theoretical. One of Glatze’s old poems longs for a time when men who love women can go around waving a flag in celebration of their sexuality. Maybe it’s the culture that polarizes and divides people into camps where one person is right and one person is wrong. Benoit never nails down a reason, in no small part because Glatze is rather dodgy and protective of his own fragility while trying to convert Benoit himself.

Glatze was involved in the production of I Am Michael, which is, in turn, rather demure and protective of Michael Glatze’s transformation. James Franco’s presentation of Glatze is determinedly vague. Remember those suits from A Scanner Darkly which constantly changed so nobody could ever read who you were or what you were thinking? That seems to be the basis for Franco’s performance, and it seems to be the intent of Justin Kelly’s film. Kelly and Glatze present Glatze’s story as a search for his true self; that he actually believes these identities are who he is and what he belongs to. Kelly politely refuses to judge Glatze in any of his various personalities, but he also neglects to penetrate Glatze as a human being.

With the public and performative nature of Glatze’s identities, there are many different avenues that Justin Kelly could have walked down. But, the closest he comes to identifying why Glatze changes is putting Franco in a park and spinning the camera around him while he has a panic attack/identity crisis over his heart palpitations. Franco’s skin-deep performance isn’t aided by the screenplay which is simply a vehicle for Glatze’s surface presentation of his own story (Justin Kelly may have written the screenplay, but Michael Glatze had much input into the film).

In interviews that accompanied the Sundance premiere, Glatze and Kelly stated that they wanted the film to walk down a very narrow path that refused to judge anybody on any side of the argument (a decidedly balanced statement for somebody who told Ricky Martin that “homosexuality was a cage”). In doing so, I Am Michael is about as bold as its Target-purchased wardrobe. Over the course of 101 minutes, you never get the feeling that either Justin Kelly or James Franco figured out or understood Michael Glatze. The audience is left with a Wikipedia entry on Michael Glatze’s life that demurely rattles off relevant life points.

This is by design. Zachery Quinto makes Glatze’s boyfriend, Bennett, come to life as a person who genuinely cares about Glatze. The various bible teachers create enticing characters in their bit parts. But, Franco’s central Glatze is more absent than ever. He’s a theoretical presentation of a person who seems to be an impossibility in modern society where everybody has to be pigeonholed. Glatze is his own contradiction. Perhaps this movie is in the wrong format. This is a story that is less suited to a narrative feature than to an investigative documentary; one that tries to penetrate Glatze and isn’t afraid of offending anybody (and may offend everybody). Maybe I Am Michael is burdened by its star power, too afraid to rock the boat for fear that it would derail somebody’s career. Whatever it is, the movie just doesn’t work without having a point of view. By not taking a stance on the character, I Am Michael becomes the antithesis of Michael Glatze himself. Perhaps that’s Justin Kelly’s point, but it’s not a very good one.