Rockin' Every Inch

Rating: Null/10 (19 September 2001)

I was talking with my mother last night, trying to explain to her the film I had just seen; the conversation went something like this:
Me: `So I saw this great film last night about an East German drag queen who had a botched sex change operation who's touring the U.S. by way of chains of Old Time Country Buffet-like restaurants with her rock band.'
Mother: (loooooong pause) an East German what?
Me: `Drag Queenwell not exactly a drag queen since there's been surgery involvedsoan East German transsexual, or transgenderwaitwhat's' the difference between a transsexual and a transgender?'
Mother: `is that the beginning of a joke?'
Me: `Nojust hard keeping all those `trans' people straightha hastraightI made a joke'
Mother: ` (nervous laughter)welllet me get your father he wants to say hi.'
And so it goes with trying to explain this film. Adapted from Mitchell's Off-Broadway hit glam musical, Hedwig (if you stop trying to figure out which trans type Hedwig is) is a rocking, hysterical and touching film. John Cameron Mitchell is an absolute riot and the viewer gets to see the history of Hedwig through song, through flashback and through very creative uses of animation. What other film this summer encourages viewers to sing `I put on my make-up, turn on the 8 Track, I'm taking the wig down off the shelf' along with a Chanel laden Drag Queen? The scenes of Hedwig (in full Farrah Fawcett mode) rockin' out angrily about her `Angry Inch' (which is what was left of you know what after the ill-fated sex change attempt) amongst the blue hairs, blue collars and sneeze guards at the Eat-n-Park are priceless. But this drag queen isn't all just Estée Lauder powder and glitter red lipstick; she's got heart and so does the film, which is, at its core, a love story. A majority of the film is singing, but unlike the Phil Collinsesque-Disney-musical-coma-inducing-sappy-assed-generic-soundtracks, the music in Hedwig is gritty, emotional and highly charged. So, in a summer of flat movies, with no plots and the most insipid bunch of over paid morons sleeping thought their parts, Hedwig and her band rock the end of summer back to life. Not one for the kiddies (go ahead, try to explain it to them), that's for certain. But also for certain, Hedwig is bigger than the velociraptors, prettier than Ben Affleck and badder than the apes.