To Wong Foo, Thanks for Everything

Patrick Swayze plays Vida Boheme, a classy and long-reigning drag queen. With his understudy Noxeema Jackson (Wesley Snipes), Vida wins a New York drag stage contest and an all-expenses-paid trip to Hollywood. But when Miss Chi Chi Rodriguez (John Leguizamo) cries at having lost the contest, soft-hearted Vida cashes in the airline tickets so the three of them can take a car out West. The film becomes a strange sort of buddy road movie, with the three cross-dressers traveling across the American heartland in a shiny yellow Cadillac. First they tangle with Sheriff Dollard (Chris Penn). He stops them for a minor traffic violation, puts the moves on Vida, and Vida knocks him out, so they flee. Later, they are stranded by car problems in a small town in Nebraska. Renting a room in a hotel, they put some life into the town and its annual strawberry festival. They provide a mousy local woman, Carol Ann (Stockard Channing), with new role models of assertiveness. They also insist on chivalrous treatment from the local good old boys and give lessons on courting to a teenage girl. This film was released on the heels of the more outrageous Australian film The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert, which featured Terence Stamp as a drag queen.

- Michael Betzold

AMG REVIEW:
Men dressing in women's clothing has long been an axiom of comedy, and the trio of drag queens in Beeban Kidron's breezy comedy mines that basic fact for all it's worth. The script sends the unlikely queens, played by Wesley Snipes, Patrick Swayze, and John Leguizamo, on a trip across the American heartland, where they encounter a number of people unfamiliar with their lifestyle choice. The comedy takes a fanciful turn, when, after being stranded in a small town in Nebraska, the drag crew, as if by magic, begins to reform the bad manners of the local men and improve the personal lives of some of the women, assimilating with amazing speed. Also fanciful is the film's decision to skirt the issue of the trio's sex lives, which might not have seemed so amusing to some viewers. In general, the three principals are so committed to their roles and queen it up with so much attitude, that it's impossible not to be entertained.

- Michael Costello