vintagevani

The premise: a meek substitute teacher with biting wit named Richard leaves behind his life in New York, consisting of drag queen besties and failing careers in both comedy and education, for a permanent science teaching position at a high school in a super conservative small town in Texas, only to be fired within a week when the principal finds out he is gay. Knowing that Texas has laws in place that allow workplace discrimination against members of the LGBTQIA+ community and that a lawsuit would be unsuccessful as a result, Richard hits a bar outside of town where an angel of mercy, in the form of a trans woman named Karma, offers Richard a place to stay and takes him to a drag show that same night. There, Richard gets drunk, puts on campy drag makeup, hijacks the show by attacking the featured drag queen with insults and is ultimately a hit among the crowd. Thus, Bianca Del Rio is created and an elaborate prank commences. Disguised as Bianca, Richard is rehired at the high school and everyone there, staff and students, are none the wiser. Bianca catches the eye of a handsome but not too bright football coach, and, after receiving a nomination for a Teacher of the Year award, becomes targeted by a very jealous teacher and her family. Hijinks ensue.

If you are a fan of Bianca Del Rio, or just want to stay in one Saturday and take in a popcorn movie, this is a good film to watch. It's really important that you don't take the film too seriously, because it's camp to the core, played mainly for laughs with profanity and just a tiny bit of gross-out humor thrown in. The film plays more like a chain of situations (a couple of which are pretty implausible) illustrated through a raunchy cartoon than a movie with a message (the message is there, though). Many of the characters, in addition to several being needlessly cruel, are quite dim-witted and fall for the ruse immediately without ever bothering to do a background check on Bianca, though watching her consistently combat their stupidity with her trademark wit is pretty entertaining. That said, the movie doesn't serve as the biggest and best showcase for her talents (for that, you must take in a live show the next time she is in your town; I can tell you myself she is excellent live and even more consistently takes down her hecklers with her brand of biting humor), but fans will enjoy not only her in the starring role but also a slew of cameos from RuPaul's Drag Race alumni (Bianca herself won the sixth season), as well as RuPaul himself in an out-of-drag appearance.