The Kinsey Sicks – self-defined as a “dragapella beautyshop quartet” – camp and mince it up in this insipid concert film designed to mock Bush-Cheney neocon values. While the excesses of the current administration may inspire a gold mine of sharp satire (cue John Stewart and Stephen Colbert), this drag queen act has no clue how to harvest humor from today’s political scene.
This comedy group’s “act” merely consists of smutty jokes, mild humiliation of their predominantly homosexual San Francisco audience (“Good evening, ladies and lesbians”) and musical parody routines that inevitably deflate within seconds of the opening bars. Republicans, as presented here, are little more than a bunch of elitist, corrupt, prejudiced jerks – and the film spends 84 minutes driving that single point home with nauseating repetition. Even Howard Dean would wince at the puerile smacks aimed at the G.O.P.
As for the performers themselves, the Kinsey Sicks (Rachel, Winnie, Trixie and Trampolina) are the least amusing drag performers in recent memory. Buried beneath an overkill of big hair and Fauvist make-up, they look like rejects from a John Waters casting call – and none of them possess a fraction of the talent that drag superstars like the Lady Bunny or RuPaul bring to that distinctive genre.
The on-screen audience response to their act is polite, at best, but the viewer will be crying in agony at the incompetence of the production.
