Great costumes highlight this desert road trip. (spoilers)

Rating: 8/10 (14 May 2006)

For some reason, I had the premonition that the Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert was a sort of lavish fantasy tale set in the desert. Like a drag queen version of Alice in Wonderland or something like that, and particularly it was the outrageous (but spectacular) costumes which had me thinking this, in addition to never having seen the previews.
This is the story of two drag queen friends (Hugo Weaving and Guy Pierce) and their transsexual friend (Terrence Stamp) who get the idea to travel to some isolate town in Australia and perform at a hotel in a cabaret show. Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, refers to their vintage bus which takes the trio to an odd assortment of locations along the way with its irritating knack for frequently breaking down. In a way, this is a typical sort of road trip film of friends bonding over harder soul-searching moments, particularly among Bernie (Stamp) who recently lost his companion and Mitzi (Weaving) who is summoned to this little town by his wife who asks for his help with "something." In a sort of way of painting the town red, the trio do tend to light up the bland and almost alien life with their outrageous costumes (and it seems that the actors change clothes in nearly every scene) and disco-days performances, awing some and angering others and it seems those who are the most understanding are those who themselves at some point have been ostracized.
It is a great film that offers a lot of laugh and the sort of wit so familiar to comedies such as these. I thought it was ridiculous to place the costume designer on one of those idiotic 'Worst Dressed' lists for her credit-card dress design, considering it complimented the art direction of this film quite nicely. These were by far some of the best costumes on film.