CINEMA: Andrew Worsdale
LET’S get one thing straight. Amblin Entertainment, those nice guys who gave the world ET and have now brought us To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar, will never, ever, make a good movie about drag queens. They may have enough money to secure the most fabulous outfits in the world, but, at the end of the day, honeys, they can’t tell a story unless it’s got their brand of sugar- coated alien in it.
Patrick Swayze is Vida Boheme, Wesley Snipes is Noxeema Jackson and John Leguizamo is Chi Chi Rodriguez: three dressed-to-kill drag queens who head out to Hollywood after winning a drag contest in New York. On the way their car breaks down and they end up saving the graveyard-like town of Snyderville, middle America, with their good humour, honesty and unflappable sense of glamour.
Says executive producer Bruce Cohen: “The story, the dialogue, the characters in this script, were all wonderful and witty.” Oh puhlease! It’s like saying you can make a funny movie just by putting Sylvester Stallone in high heels. After the initial gimmick of seeing macho superstars in women’s clothing, the whole thing begins to drag.
Swayze plays the kind of squeaky-clean moral sweetie-pie he excels in, looking like Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot, while Snipes, initially amusing in his ponytails and painted nails, just becomes so OTT it seems he’s poking fun at the fabulous queens who gave such good face in Jennie Livingstone’s documentary Paris is Burning. They are too self-conscious, too arch; they don’t have the sense of ease that comes naturally to any truly cool — or should one say hot? — drag queen.
Only Leguizamo, as the Hispanic ingenue who comes along for the ride, manages to project the sassiness one expects of a potent drag queen. But, then, he has the experience: he has won awards for his off-Broadway show Mambo Mouth, and portrayed Puerto Rican transvestite Ruby in Donny Leiner’s acclaimed short film Time Expired. In To Wong Foo, only he is fierce, friendly and for real.
For the rest, the movie is a major disappointment, especially coming as it does from hip young director Beeban Kidron. Apart from some boringly trendy art direction and more wardrobe changes than the Folies-Bergere, To Wong Foo is filled with bad plotting, stale dramatic moments that linger too long, a ridiculously bad musical score that threatens to sabotage the whole effort, and only about two decent wisecracks.
Rent Prisicilla again if you want to have some fun in a frock in the desert. At least that movie had something to say for itself.