Review: Girl King (2002)
It was Naughty Pirate Movie week at casa de la trancer (or 'gouge my eyeballs out with a spoon week' take your pick). And having slogged through the hetfilm 'Pirates', I turned towards the more sappho side of cinema with 'Girl Kings'. A movie I found while randomly perusing the Wolfe Video site. I mean it's got lesbians, and pirates and Drag King's. How could I refuse? One day later, I'm honestly wishing I had!!
Per the distribution company, here's the synopsis:
With a fistful of fetish in every frame, Girl King is a sexy, swashbuckling, gender-bending adventure on the high seas. When a naïve baby Butch is taken prisoner by the pirate Captain Candy, a hunt begins to find the Queen’s stolen "treasure." In a world where "men were men, and girls were girls," the loss of the Queen’s treasure has turned things upside down. Now, tops are bottomed, pirate captains are seduced by tranny sailors and cross-dressing femmes pack a wallop. With the help of the mysterious Easy, can Butch and Captain Candy find the Queen’s lost treasure and restore the line between butch and femme, or will the treasure, and the "natural" order, be lost forever?
Riiigggghhhhhttttt, that almost makes this movie sound good doesn't? Yeah, well don't let that synopsis deceive you. This movie had me thinking what if the producers of Pirates and Girl King had joined forces to create *one* adult pirate movie instead of two? Well, it still would have sucked but at least I would have only wasted *90* minutes of my life.
Hi, I'm Butch and while I may not be the worst actress in the world, I do have a tendency to get outacted by this vest which magically covers my breasts no matter the situation.
I don't even know if 'bad' or 'awful' are the right adjectives to describe this movie. The acting here is certainly better than Pirates, although no one will be winning any awards anytime soon. I was entertained, in a general sort of way. I didn't fast-forward through anything and Lord knows I should have. I found the actresses who played Butch and Claudia cute. Captain Candy cracked me the Hell up (intentionally and unintentionally). I can appreciate the *idea* of the story but...
Hi, I'm Claudia and I play Butch's love interest. I also play the role of Easy, Butch's, uh, other love interest. This face here? That's the one I made when I read the script. But, you know, not *everyone* can be Lena Headey!
Oh man, the execution leaves A LOT to be desired. It's the kind of movie where the next time some pretentious film snob tells you Independent movies are *always* better than Hollywood/mainstream movies *this* is what you pop into the DVD player to prove them wrong. Had there been a better script and a competent director this *could* have been a laugh out loud satire of sexual mores and gender. Instead, it's ham-fisted message, pedestrian writing and at times godawful directing make it more of a chore to get through. Too often I felt like I was obligated to finish this thing in support of lesbian filmmakers than out of any real desire to watch the movie.
Hi, I'm Captain Candy. trancer found me the most entertaining part of the movie. I'm butch, no the *other* butch! And I'm a pirate. I'm supposed to be drunk as well but we didn't have enough money for actual props. So, just pretend I'm bombed out of my mind on rum... 'cuz I totally am!!
Scenes are intercut with some 1920's pirate movie, a random shot of a monkey, beach scenes, underwaters scenes, title cards that stay up *way* too fucking long, porn clips and pirate drag kings doing the nasty with femmes (shot soo poorly you can't tell if they're actually having sex or simulating it). Combined together it all has that air of 'I just finished film school and these lame ass shots of random nothingness have meaning people. DEEP PHILOSOPHICAL MEANING!!'. When instead they're just time wasters that had me rolling my eyes into the back of my skull and wondering if now would be a good time to go and check my email.
Hi, I'm the Pirate Queen and I'm the one who gets this whole monstrous plot rolling. And for that trancer thinks I should be beaten with a large wooden mallet! The same one she used to pound against her skull while watching this movie!
In the end, this is another check on the longlist of lesbian movies that suck and, sadly, make watching mainstream tv/films with subtext the better alternative.
Because for the sheer 'random WTF? factor' nothing beats a shot of a monkey!
And because you all are my flist and I love you so, I'm sharing the awfulness with you. Sure, you have to download it. But, that's just because I'm unable to deliver it to your doorstep along with a bottle of Stoli to help get you through it.
File: Girl King
File type: .avi
File size: 700Mb
Download: Part One || Part Two || Part Three || Part Four
Note: These were split using HJ split. So you'll have to download the program to combine the segments.
And if you are so inclined to purchase this, it's available at Wolfe Video. Which has hundreds of lesbian movies. And some of them actually don't suck!