Exuberant Road Movie.

Rating: 7/10 (14 June 2012)

Three professional drag queens -- the curious-looking Weaving, the muscular Pearce, and the aging Stamp -- decide to leave Sidney for a gig in the town of Alice Springs in the middle of nowhere. What follows is a road trip out of "The Electric Koolade Acid Test." They make no secret of their gender orientation. On their journey through the vast desert they encounter puzzlement and prejudice. Their performance in Alice Springs wins no prizes but Weaving acquires the cheerfully accepting wife and son he'd left behind, and Stamp can quit worrying about wrinkles because he's found a nice, good-natured bloke to settle down with.
I'd imagine that one of the problems in making (or appreciating) a movie like this is what you do after the initial shock of seeing three guys prance around in fancy costumes wears off. Stephen Elliott, the writer/director, has generally gotten past the problem. The three guys are soon individualized. Weaver is the anxious, uncertain guy with the odd ball eyebrows. Pearce is flamboyant and chipper. Stamp is somber and worried about what will happen now that his looks have faded.
But turning three fairies into persons is the easy part. "The Boys In The Band" did it with a snap of the fingers. The tough part is laying out a story with some substance to it. Otherwise the viewer is liable to be bored listening to the bitchy insults and improbable displays. Elliott and the cast give the story just enough juice to get us all through it happily, aided immeasurably by the incandescent magnificence of the Australian outback. You have never seen such sere and blasted vistas. Well, not since "Lawrence of Arabia".
What really worried me was that this effervescent flick would turn "serious" in the end -- sentimental and sloppy. You know -- one of the trio is beaten to death or contracts AIDS or something. It doesn't happen. I grovel in gratitude.
And how do the boys handle the roles? Pretty well, as far as that goes. Their act consists of appearing on stage in kaleidoscopically gaudy outfits and make up and making believe they are singing and dancing to a recorded song. The songs aren't bad, by the way. You won't get boiler maker's gap from listening to disco or pop songs from the 40s. Stamp and his frown look completely out of place under a mop of plastic hair. His settling down was little loss to the act. Weaving doesn't look bad as a prismatically groomed young woman. And Pearce doesn't look bad at all until you get down to the muscles, which remind you that he is a more slender simulacrum of Arnold Schwarzenegger. There used to be shows like theirs at the now-defunct Finnochio's in San Francisco, a tourist spot frequented by celebrities for some thirty years. I had a chat with the actor Thomas Gomez there.
It's an interesting film, never really boring, and gorgeously photographed. It's a kind of lesson in how to construct a good time out of nothing much. They have a lot of fun, and if they get punched in the face by some redneck, they cry and sulk for a while but soon get over it.