Queen Tut: drag queens vs developers

19 May 2024 -

Queen Tut is a new movie shot in Toronto, so you will recognize most of the streets, alleyways, and businesses of the gay neighbourhood. It’s about an Egyptian boy, now living in Canada, who wants to be a drag queen, dipping his toe into the deep well of gender, which of course does not sit well with his handsome dad or his repressive upbringing. The whole thing is adorned with affirming messages and the plot is one of those “they’re trying to take our [something] away” stories. The movie seems to suggest that developers are homophobes, and there’s an uncomfortable moment where the activists dress in their loudest outfits and throw shoes at the suits during a public consultation meeting.

Queen Tut stars Alexandra Billings as Malibu, who you might know from various TV shows like Transparent and Grey’s Anatomy. She has one of the other uncomfortable moments (there are several) where she smashes a perfectly good guitar on stage in an act of defiance then sings an empowerment anthem, a showcase scene which likely led to her receiving a Canadian Screen Award nomination for Performance in a  Leading Role, Comedy. Billings describes her character as someone who “fights like Scarlett O’Hara for the plantation, Tara. Malibu understands home. What she doesn’t understand is that home is where everyone else is and it can travel.” 

Malibu’s bar is called Mandy’s, which name checks local legend Mandy Goodhandy, here declared ‘everyone’s drag mother’, but sadly for us the actual Mandy is only ever seen in photographs. The movie could have used her ebullience. In the end, the evil developers win, which means they’ll just have to find a new location for the bar. Queen Tut is loud and proud, the product of well-meaning corporate entities like Crave and CBC doing a little outreach to queer talent, but after a while I just longed for the simplicity of a Godzilla movie.