"Girls Will Be Girls" Review

I’m one of those gay guys who’s never really understood drag. I’ve somehow found myself at dozens of drag shows in my life, watching an endless procession of boozy drag queens try to embarrass some straight guy with tired double-entendres.

They were clearly amusing themselves and occasionally even the audience. Me? Not so much.

So when I was asked to review Girls Will Be Girls, the 2003 movie and now a series of “webisodes” about a never-was movie actress, her put-upon best friend, and their starry-eyed roommate, I was wary.

Apparently I’m not the only gay guy who thinks drag is getting to be, well, a drag (see accompanying story).

And on one hand, Girls Will Be Girls, the film and subsequent webisodes, is all about drag. In one particularly inspiring bit of casting, every female in the project is played by a guy, even the background extras in a party scene and even one of the leads, age five, in a brief flashback scene.

The humor, meanwhile, is somehow both anachronistic and mean. In the movie, Evie talks about her abortions, saying, “I’ve had more kids pulled out of me than a burning orphanage!” In one of the webisodes, Evie says, “I have a rape whistle, but it doesn’t work. Sometimes at night, I blow and blow, but no one comes.”

If you find these jokes offensive or insensitive, I’m not going to argue otherwise. But I found it impossible to take them seriously when spoken by what is obviously a man in drag. It’s camp or parody or irony or all of the above.

Still, in another sense, the movie isn’t about drag at all. What makes the project work are comic actors who are absolutely at the top of their game and who are also, somehow, totally inhabiting these over-the-top characters. The moviegoers may know they’re men in drag, but the characters do not. Unlike most drag queens, or, say, the groan-inducing Nathan Lane in The Birdcage, there is no wink-wink-nod-nod distance here between the actors and the characters they’re playing.

Jack Plotnick has long been one of Hollywood’s most versatile if underappreciated actors. The role of Evie is — yes, I’ll say it — his Ennis Del Mar.

Jack Plotnick as "Evie"

I remember first seeing Clinton Leupp’s Coco Peru in Trick (1999) and, while I thought the inclusion of the character didn’t make any narrative sense, it was instantly clear why the filmmakers had made a place for her. She’s truly something special.

Clinton Leupp as "Coco"

Hulking Jeffery Roberson is miscast even as a drag queen version of a Hollywood ingénue, but he still has his moments here.

Jeffery Roberson as Varla