Remember how good Barbie Are you touched by the brilliant mix of comedy and camp? Priscilla was there first. The adventures of Priscilla, queen of the desert is notable for a few reasons: it’s one of the few movies named after a bus, for starters. But it’s also one of the most joyful road movies you’ll ever see, a bona fide camp classic with a big laugh and an even bigger heart. Not only was it one of the best Prime Video movies for Pride Month , it’s also one of the best Prime Video movies for anyone looking for some warmhearted fun.
It’s hard to believe this film came out – pun fully intended – 35 years ago, because it still feels fresh (and, in today’s reactionary climate, relevant). Guy Pearce ((Moment) and Hugo Weaving (The Matrix) are drag queens who team up with a trans woman played by Terence Stamp to travel from Sydney to Alice Springs in the eponymous tour bus. Adventures ensue, tea is spilled, and nails and hearts are broken.
Radio times‘ David Parkinson loved it. “Brilliantly bitchy, fantastically photographed and beautifully acted, this Australian frock opera (the costumes won a well-deserved Oscar) tackles serious issues with satirical accuracy and profound insight.” And for Variety David Stratton, his sheer joy of life more than made up for the shortcomings. “The plot of Priscilla is not as important as the weird, wicked dialogue, the wild costumes and makeup, and the general good vibes of the whole enterprise.” It is “a cheerfully vulgar and bitchy, but essentially warmhearted road movie.”
It’s a bit of a bummer, the Chicago Tribune wrote in a review that’s not currently online, but “it’s funny and compassionate, silly and sweet.” Entertainment weekly agreed, saying, “I was unprepared for the generosity and grandeur with which Australian writer-director Stephan Elliott transformed this utterly improbable road movie into something compelling – if a touch sentimental – in its naive vision of a perfectly tolerant world.”
The film re-watched in 2019, The guardPeter Bradshaw said it was “a great film that was ahead of its time in terms of LGBT issues and in some ways is still ahead of ours… (it’s a) funny, smart and intensely engaging road trip comedy – an anti-Crocodile Dundee.”