The Adventures of Pricilla, Queen of the Desert is a wonderful story highlighted with stunning cinematography, excellent costume design and outstanding performances. The story is concerned with three drag-queens who get a gig in the middle of the Australian desert. Through these characters the film touches on subjects of alienation, found and forgotten love, friendship and hardship. Mostly set on their road trip through the desert, they travel in a lavender bus, which over the course of the film is subjected to hate crimes and breakdowns; becoming a symbol for its femme-masculine inhabitants and what they have endured. The Adventures... is truly original and entertaining from its highs to its well executed dramatic lows. S

many superlatives have been thrown at this film, many sycophantic accolades. In my opinion, it is an attempt to cut through, a bold, and even adventurous exercise in film story telling. the sad reality is that it is a failure in honest theatrical terms.Like a sparkling cuvée, it is imbued with effervescent enthusiasm, but its pedigree lacks the finesse of the champagne it attempts to imitate, and, not surprisingly, it conveys very little taste.The direction is stilted and obvious, even clunky at times; the acting, with one, and occasionally two notable exceptions, rates from bold to over the top, and the dialogue suffers from poor scripting and unrefined delivery. Like many (alas too many) Australian films, it is a work based upon a script devoid of a good story, which is competently shot (although in this case containing some technical errors of judgement) but rather over enthusiastically played out. PQD is like the outpourings of an amateur theatre troupe, hell bent upon having fun, strutting their individual stuff, and playing for laughs.

Ralph Waite aka Bernadette Bassenger (Terence Stamp) suffered a friend's death and agrees to go with Tick Belrose aka Mitzi Del Bra (Hugo Weaving) to perform in Alice Springs, a desert resort town in the middle of Australia. Adam Whitely aka Felicia Jollygoodfellow (Guy Pearce) is eager to join and buys a touring bus christening her Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.This has some fun comedic touches. However the trick of this movie is that the guys don't play it too broadly. Stamp and Weaving are actually playing it reserved. They are more wore-down middle age men than flamboyant gays. Guy Pearce is the only one playing it somewhat broadly. The costumes are great ridiculousness. The movie is full of big laughs and also a touching character study.

Anybody who knows me would know that I think Australia has only made about 3 good films in the past 20 years (I'm just sick of comedy's - plus I have almost no idea what Australian films are in Development - for good reason that I don't want to know). This happens to be one of the highest ratings of an Australian film you are likely to see from me. For English-speaking-countries film industries - I prefer Hollywood, the UK or Canada.The plot synopsis would probably be one of the strangest I have ever looked at - and if you walk in expecting a strange comedy then you have come to the right place. If "2 drag queens and a transsexual go across to the desert to mouth lyrics of pop stars" seems like your sort of movie then I will hand this to you, if you want a strange comedy then I will also hand it to you.If comic timing is how you judge a performance in comedy then Guy Pearce is the best actor out of this movie. Seeing him in this before Prometheus made me see him in a very new light when playing Weyland.So if you like strange comedy films where the lead characters are 3 respected actors playing transvestites and transsexuals (they might not be THAT respected but I never thought I'd see Hugo Weaving in a dress after seeing him in The Matrix) then I will hand it to you saying "expect transvestism jokes".How do I end a review for this movie off? Oh I know "Bye bye Ralph".