Fiction movie Milk is not as good as The Times of Harvey Milk, a 1984 Oscar documentary that sent scriptwriter Dustin Lance Black into several years of  research, interviews and rewrites. Together with star Sean Penn, the present white hat-black hat caricature and cast are another caution against redoing without improving -- and, in fact, often worsening.

Like the girl with the curl in the middle of the forehead, director Gus Van Sant is uneven, but on the whole horrid here, which reminds me of  author George Sand’s position in her friendly dispute with Flaubert. She declared that the author/auteur is anything but a detached observer when pleading for human amelioration within a cause. Granted, because the last eight years of the life of the gay activist elected to the San Francisco Board of Supervisors are public record and, as with any such historical rendering, there can be no suspense.

Elections, initiatives and amendments on same-sex marriage, right to life, unmarried adoption and Asian-American land ownership have made the time ripe for a good updated energizing of the man, his platform that expanded to minority seniors, blacks and the unemployed, and his yes-we-can hammering on Hope. To its Tosca death scene, however, the soap opera screenplay offers no roundness, no depth of personality or issue: one-dimensional all, Christian crusader Anita Bryant and conservative state Senator John Briggs (Denis O’Hare) on the one hand, Milk and his homosexual (and, later, lesbian) adherents on the equally unrealistic other.

The sole potentially gripping portrayal is that of Dan White, fellow supervisor and the villain whose light sentence was protested and ended in a suicide printed in final credits. To the rôle of this confused, conservative Irish-Catholic former firefighter family man, Josh Brolin brings ambiguity, so that motivation in financial and political duress is ostensible though not complete. His psyche cries out, “I’ve got issues.”  Aside from him and Connelly, owner of a liquor store-cum-Merchants Association, no one is convinced of anything beyond coming out of closets, even when he or she is already obviously gay.

Milk’s upbringing in Long Island is not raised beyond his remark that his parents were heterosexual and that, thus, homosexuality is innate, not learned. His early teaching, theater experience and first stay in San Francisco are not included, either. The screen opens the day before he turns forty, in a business suit back on a New York City municipal staircase like the later one in California, picking up hippie-ish Mississippian Scott Smith (James Franco).

Milk says he will not live to see fifty, to which his new lover suggests they relocate to San Francisco. Out there in the Scandinavian-Greek Fifth District soon to be popularly called Castro, they convert a shop into Castro Camera. It does good business and becomes a gay gathering place. Upset by post-Stonewall homophobic violence from police and civilians, Milk speaks out and finds himself sheltering and advising younger activists and then running for public office.

He is defeated but runs again. And, increasingly politicized, he runs again and again, switching to a suit and tie and soliciting backing from go-slow homosexual financial successes like David Goodstein (Zvi Howard Rosenman). In parallel, the private love life written for the candidate plays like television schmaltz. Though the two are to wind up as caring friends, Scott tires of the political fishbowl and leaves, replaced by hysterical, whining, accented Jack Lira (Diego Luna).

Sympathetic Mayor George Moscone (Victor Garber) returns a favor and has voting by district replace citywide elections, which led to  opponents screaming gerrymander. His campaign organized this time by cherubic lesbian Anne Kronenberg (Alison Pill), Milk is elected to the Board in 1977 and becomes the country’s first acknowledged male homosexual to hold high office.

The partying more exuberant to period music, the classical- or opera-interludes less frequent, Milk displays some public relations savvy, as in “dispersing” a staged march with riot overtones, but refuses to compromise in time-honored back-scratching. Assertive, humorous, but yet naïve, he pooh-poohs but is flattered by Moscone’s hint of a future ascension to that office. “I like that, a homosexual with power.”

Spotty recreations and ‘70s music do not counter screen staginess, an effect increased by much narration, rather than dramatization, disguised as repeated expository dictation onto cassette tapes. Whatever the man may have been, token flashes of doubt-loneliness add no flesh. With neither subtlety nor depth, Milk does no service to its group cause or individual subject. As sung in H.M.S. Pinafore, “skim milk masquerades as cream.”

(Released by Focus Features and rated “R” for language, some sexual content, and brief violence.)