A We Made a Thing Studios production. Producer: Tom Phillips. Executive producers: Ari Harrison, Cam Rogers. Directors, writers: Emma Hough Hobbs, Leela Varghese. Running time: 87 mins.
3.5 of 4 stars
A hundred years of sexist and heteronormative harem fantasies about Amazon women from outer space get explored, exploited and exploded in “Lesbian Space Princess,” the charming, disarming and not even remotely alarming adult musical fantasy cartoon from real-life couple and first time feature filmmakers Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese. That isn’t to say this ribald and rapacious Australian cartoon is for your five year old — space hasn’t been this sexed up since at least “Flesh Gordon,” though “Barbarella” might be a somewhat closer analogue. But why play the movie critics’ game of comparing something incomparable to things it nominally shares a tradition with? Ultimately this almost all-female intergalactic “Candide” deserves high praise for its sex-positive and LGBTQA+-affirming attitude, wrapped around a sincere, ardent and generous heart.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one: there is a planet somewhere in outer space inhabited almost entirely by nubile women. If you’re a fan of 50s sci-fi, you landed there in “Queen of Outer Space” and its unofficial remake “Missile to the Moon,” or maybe bumbled your way to its surface in “Abbott and Costello Go To Mars” — the second movie to feature Anita Eckberg, mutely waiting out her barren Universal Studios contract as a Venusian guard. The women there rule with imperiousness, until earthmen of pretty much any shape and size land a rocket in their midst and sow chaos by their mere presence. Robust maleness ignites a desire among the formerly fully independent Amazon tribe to surrender to the inevitability of masculine authority. Women who resist are painted as manipulative villains, and cisgender heterosexual sex in the missionary position is suggested but never acted upon.
This isn’t that movie at all. Instead, it’s the bracingly rude journey to self-actualization of Princess Saira (Shabana Abeez) from the all-female and all lesbian planet Clitopolis, where the anxious princess is sure she’s unworthy of love, but is willing to try for it anyhow. The object of her affection is Kiki the Bounty Hunter (Bernie Van Tiel), a self-possessed and self-obsessed wayfarer and whatever-the-lesbian-term-for-“womanizer”-is who breaks up with Sari on the eve of the Lesbian Ball, thereby assuring Saira another in a string of public humiliations. But just then Kiki is kidnapped in the midst of a throuple by the Straight White Maliens, the dethroned and forgotten rulers of their own galaxy, who need to get their straight white mitts on Saira’s “labrys,” a double-headed axe that is both a symbol of Saira’s womanhood and an iconic image of lesbian power…
Along the way there are some rather wonderful parody emo alt-folk songs written by Varghese and performed courtesy of pangalactic gay pop idol Willow (Gemma Chua-Tran), a far more suitable partner for Saira who actually likes, respects and is inspired by her. But Saira is the kind of inexperienced lover who mistakes a fling for a life-altering event. So their mission becomes to liberate Kiki from the evil grip of the Maliens (whittily drawn as sentient “rulers” — the gradeschool pencil case kind) so that Saira can prove her love and make it to the Lesbian Ball.
The charming graphic style of “LSP” recalls the American TV animation renaissance of the 1990s — “LSP” might have sat easily beside the work of “Rugrats”-era Klasky-Csupo, if cable animation had been a lot more adventurous with its subject matter. It’s a real cartoon. And if you don’t know what I mean by that, that’s just one more reason to seek this movie out.
An exuberant voice cast features some of Australia’s funniest alt-comics, including Richard Roxburgh, Kween Kong and the comedy troupe Aunty Donna. Extremely funny sexual content pervades the film, but none of it is intended as “erotic,” the way the master/slave content of the 50s Amazon space operas was. Sex and desire are shown to be normal, natural needs that can become foibles if we handle them poorly and mistake them for the sole agents of our self-actualization.
In its own gentle way, “Lesbian Space Princess” stands against the tradition of almost every movie ever made containing a romantic subplot — it’s a film carefully constructed to encourage us to carve our way through the chaos of the modern emotional landscape by finding the strength to be ourselves within ourselves. To put that message out there not with rancour or righteousness but through laughter, joy and witticism makes “Lesbian Space Princess” remarkable, as well as wise.
