Score: 4 / 5
Confession: I knew about the stage musical but had never seen or listened to it. Now, thanks to this adaptation from the same writer, it's a full feature film experience, one that demands to be seen on a large screen with an impeccable sound system. Unfortunately, a lot of its charm will be lost on audiences due to its exclusivity on Amazon Prime Video. By the end of its opening musical number, I was skeptical to say the least; it's not particularly catchy, and largely portrays a certain superficiality to its title character. In a strange mix of pop-rock music and the themes and narratives of The Prom or Kinky Boots, this movie felt at first like a ripoff. And maybe, to some extent it is, as the stage show premiered in 2017, some time after a lot of other, arguably "better" shows with similar themes had already changed the face of Broadway and the West End.
There's a glitz and glamour to the proceedings that, for me, didn't mesh with the material at first. Where are the stakes? Jamie (played by excellent newcomer Max Harwood) is a gay boy, living in Sheffield with his single mother, who dreams of becoming a drag queen. His mother (an equally excellent Sarah Lancashire) is endlessly supportive but struggling financially and emotionally, presumably due to Jamie's father (Ralph Ineson) having up and left due to his discontent and disapproval. His opening number is presented in the style of Glee or Chicago as a fantasy-reality that transforms his daily commute to (and through) school into a nightclub where he is the fabulous star. Then, after a sharp cut to harsh daylight, we follow Jamie into school on his sixteenth birthday, where he and his classmates are rebuked by their nominally villainous teacher (Sharon Horgan) for having unrealistic career goals. She tells them that they had all better prepare for a life in working-class suburbia and the doldrums of their futures.
Jamie is the rare bird in these stories who embraces his theatricality and performativity with little regard to his own safety or those around him. True to himself to a fault, he will prove, I expect, a divisive image in the thick but recent history of queer-coded kids coming of age in these films; confident in his identity, he doesn't experience shame and doubt and fear so much as hope, excitement, and the thrill of possibility. He's not self-sufficient, though, and relies on his friends to help him self-actualize. His best friend -- maybe his only friend -- is Pritti (Lauren Patel), the best in class and aspiring doctor who is ostracized due to her religion. Often bullied together, they stand up for each other whenever possible. It's a lovely example of healthy and unproblematic allyship rarely portrayed in any real depth in this genre.
To complete Jamie's triumvirate of supportive friends, we are gifted with the astounding Richard E. Grant as Hugo, the owner of a boutique that caters to, shall we say, the flamboyant. Once the famed drag queen Loco Chanelle, Hugo has survived more heartbreak and horrors than Jamie -- or, one imagines, most of the people who will watch this film -- will ever understand. In a single song, titled "This Was Me" and newly written for the film, he works to teach Jamie all about how to be a drag queen. More importantly, though, he teaches Jamie the roots of the craft, the profound (and profoundly sad) history of urban drag and queer culture. In some of the most effective use of stock footage (and some recreated historical scenes) I've ever seen in a film, we're presented with images of what Hugo's community suffered during the AIDS epidemic, street protests and police brutality, the death of Freddie Mercury, and of course Princess Diana meeting with sick patients. Some of these may not mean much to the unfamiliar, but the effect is still the same: a sobering reminder that drag queens did not always have syndicated shows and global fanbases, that AIDS was a social death sentence and almost always a medical one, and that queer communities were (and often still are) targeted for far more than just schoolyard bullying.
Thankfully, Jamie's bubble is toughened but not popped by his learning of this history. He still has some maturing to do, and he will get in fights and arguments on his path to prom, where he intends to stage his second "coming out," this time as a 16-year-old drag queen. Harwood navigates a particularly difficult role with grace and knowing, wide-eyed and optimistic even as he fights back tears at his father's rebukes or the school bully's taunts. Effervescent to the end, he dazzles in musical and non-musical scenes alike, often in glittering red heels that reminded me more than once of a young Judy Garland coming into her own. By the end, the film has the rare distinction of having felt like too much of a good thing -- a candy-colored feel-good rush of energy and light that is, admittedly, tonally chaotic with peripatetic pacing -- yet needles its way into your heart nevertheless. As the credits rolled, I consciously thought it was a fun but forgettable time; that was four days ago, and I still haven't stopped thinking about it.
And for a film from a first-time director (Jonathan Butterell) and starring a new actor, that's utterly fabulous.
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