During the next several days, Vida is able to restore Channing's self-esteem, while Chi Chi falls in love with Bobby Ray but nobly points him back in the direction of a local teenage girl, and Noxeema delivers one-liners. The film's climax is the local Strawberry Festival, during which everyone dresses in red and dances on tabletops on Main Street; it's a fun festival, but poorly promoted, I guess, since no one attends except for the townspeople.
What is amazing is how the movie manages to be funny and amusing while tippy-toeing around (a) sex, (b) controversy and (c) any originality in the plot. Credit for that belongs to Swayze, Snipes and Leguizamo, who are surprisingly good at playing drag queens.
Swayze actually looks pretty good in drag (women around me were ooohing at his trim waist), and Leguizamo, playing Rosie Perez, has perfect comic timing: Through this unlikely character he demonstrates that he is a superb actor. Snipes is good, too, but in a thankless role; the movie never really engages him in a meaningful plot thread, and he is left on the sidelines with racially themed one-liners ("I ain't drivin' you no more, Miss Daisy").
It bothered me that the basic situation (as frothy as "Seven Brides for Seven Brothers") is weighed down with scenes of wife abuse that seem borrowed from another movie. There's also a creepy scene where four tough local kids prepare to rape Chi Chi; by the time the Strawberry Festival rolls around, these kids have been redeemed by the life force of the visiting queens, but I, for one, was not convinced.
Another problem is with Sheriff Dollard, the Chris Penn character, who stops the three drag queens on the highway, is knocked out in a scene that would not look realistic in a Laurel and Hardy film, and then devotes his life to chasing them down. It is suggested that he secretly knows they are men, but the movie skirts this possibility and provides a final showdown so lame that it should have been re-shot as soon as they looked at the dailies. Penn has a potentially good monologue in a bar, talking to himself about men in drag, but the writer, Douglas Carter Beane, doesn't realize its potential and can't find a punch line.
The sneak preview audience seemed to enjoy the movie immensely.
It's amazing how entertaining it is in places, considering how amateurish the screenplay is and how awkwardly the elements of the story are cobbled together. I feel like recommending the performances, and suggesting they be transported to another film. The actors emerge with glory for attempting something very hard and succeeding remarkably well. They deserve to be in a better movie.
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