Date: 06/29/2007

Category: · Writing  » Reviews  » Film · Writing  » News Coverage  » SFist · Writing  » Topic  » misc

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Whoops, sorry we're so late getting this post up -- we lost our notes and tore up the house before resigning ourselves to the idea that somewhere, someone is going to find a notebook with "the lighter side of rape" scrawled across the first page. That comment refers to Give Piece of Ass a Chance, a new Bruce LaBruce short that preceeded Starrbooty. It's a speculative spoofing of the Patty Hearst abduction that asks the question, what if Patty'd been abducted by hilarious lesbians and subjected to comedic sexual assault? Ha ha ha ha ha ha! It's a recipe for wackiness!

As usual, BLB's short is like an episode of Murder, She Wrote: layers of mystery and meaning, requiring leaps of deduction and puzzlement in order to figure out just what the hell the whole thing is about in the first place, all for a result that's not terribly rewarding. All in all, an unwatchable waste of time. The jokes were legitimately funny, though, such as a violent feminist who uses a machete to trim her girlfriend's bush; and if you enjoy lesbian bondage porn, hip hip hooray.

Starrbooty has no such pretenses. It's a breezy exploitative crime-caper spoof, part 24 and part V.I.P., with RuPaul as a tough-talking secret agent and, of course, top model. It is with great gusto that the lady delivers implausible kung-fu, going undercover as a hooker to infiltrate a crime ring of organ harvesters and ... well, the plot doesn't matter quite so much as the pulpy banter, impressive drag-queen mugging to the camera, and cock. Lots of cock. Many of the cast members, y'see, are actually porn stars.

In one scene, a Russian crime boss declares that RuPaul's going to give him a blow job, then surprises the audience by standing up, revealing his pantslessness, and thrusting an engorged dick right at the lens. "We're not going to blow you," RuPaul giggles, pulling out a phallus of her own -- a gigantic machine gun -- "we're going to blow your motherfucking cock away!"

Now THAT, ladies and gentlemen, is dialogue. It was impossible for the completely packed house not to squeal with delight at lines delivered by guest star Lady Bunny such as, "it's curtains for you -- as in my beef curtains!" Or squeal with horror at imaginative scenarios such as a CBT fantasy involving, ouch, an exercise bike.

And surprisingly, we discovered, porn stars have great comic timing. Director Mike Ruiz got fantastic performances out of Gus Mattox, Michael Lucas, and Owen Hawk (star of Screw 2: Cut to the Chase) -- possibly because they were in their element: pleasurable, unpolished, self-conscious fun that's meant to be enjoyed, rather than pondered.