It's weird, but in a funny way

Rating: 7/10 (2 August 2005)

Although this movie got a lot of good criticism when it was first released, I never watched it until now. I always thought that this wasn't a movie for me. I'm a straight guy and I was convinced that I didn't want to see weird men dressing up in women's clothes, play-backing seventies hits from ABBA or other groups. That's why I never rented it, but when it was shown on television, I decided to give it a try anyway. I could always switch it off if it was too terrible. But I didn't, I kept watching it until the end.
The story that is told in "The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert" brings us to two drag-queens and a transsexual who will go to a resort in Alice Springs, a town in the middle of the Australian desert, to perform a drag show. As they travel from Sydney to Alice Springs, they encounter all kinds of people, but are almost always the subject of misunderstanding and hate, because the locals don't always understand or like the way these three men act. When the engine of Priscilla, that's how they called their bus, breaks down in the middle of the desert, they paint it lavender, waiting for help to come. Then they meet Bob who takes them for what they are and who fixes the problem with their bus. He travels on with them, protecting them for more problems...
If you are looking for a not so average comedy, then you definitely should give this movie a try. A road movie about two drag queens and a transvestite isn't exactly something that you'll find every day, let alone a good one. And I admit that I started feeling completely different about this movie once I was seeing it. OK, it may not always be perfect and sometimes it is completely over-the-top, but it also offers some excellent laughs. And seeing Guy Pearce, Hugo Weaving and Terence Stamp in this kind of roles is already great fun on itself. Normally you wouldn't expect them in such a role, but they did a very fine job.
All in all I guess you have to be incredibly homophobic to hate this movie. I'm not saying that it's my favorite comedy of all times, but the story, the acting, the humor,... made it all worth watching. I give this movie a 7/10.