Starry-eyed Varla (Jeffrey Robertson) arrives in L.A. with dreams of becoming an actress, just like her late mother. She moves in with Evie (Jack Plotnick), a gin-swilling harpy whose own acting career stalled decades ago, and good-hearted Coco (Clinton Leupp) who yearns to conceive a child – with the doctor who carried out her abortion! Desperate to re-ignite her faded stardom, Evie has a hard time hiding her resentment as, the almost ridiculously naïve, Varla finds success and romance in the arms of Evie’s er, phallicly challenged, son Stevie (Ron Matthews). As her cruelty grows, dark secrets resurface, and the ‘girls’ get set for a showdown, right in the middle of filming Evie’s new variety show.
This day-glow, drag-fest features more shrieking inanity than a Will & Grace marathon. Set in deliberately artificial world (Douglas Sirk by way of Liberace), where all the female characters, including the extras, are played by men in drag, it’s non-stop hysteria make it an acquired taste. Like the class clown who tries just a little too hard, Girls Will Be Girls strains desperately for effect. Bad taste gags about abortion (“I’ve had more children pulled out of me than a burning orphanage”), rape, prostitution, Eastern European body odour, and a veritable avalanche of sexual dysfunction – sound funnier than they actually are. Presented with all the subtlety of a kick in the groin. Writer-director Richard Day jazzes things up with flashy editing effects, but the wayward story-structure feels more like a sitcom pilot (Day’s background is in TV shows like Ellen and the marvellous Arrested Development).
We’ve seen it all before in the superior work of John Waters. Waters knows that, amidst all sicko gags about bodily functions, we still have to care. Here boredom sets in pretty quickly, and there is something deeply misogynistic about its gleeful caricature of female trauma. Performances are so broad the actors might as well be Muppets, but Clinton Leupp musters some pathos for Coco’s plight. The climax, wherein the full horror of Evie’s crimes is unveiled via flashback, is momentarily involving, but Day over-eggs things with a CG fantasy with Evie atop a plummeting asteroid, and some prosthetic, frontal nudity (Argh!). Given Evie's venomous nature up to this point, the feelgood ending is hard to swallow. Do yourselves a favour - watch Hairspray (either version) instead.
