I don’t know about you, but I have never said “yes” to watching a movie as fast as I did when I heard the title Lesbian Space Princess. But in case you do need a little more convincing, I’m here to tell you that I loved it. A lot.
Created by Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese, Lesbian Space Princess is an animated comedy (for adults) about a shy princess with zero self-confidence who has to go on a journey across space to try to save her ex-girlfriend. It’s full of hilarious jokes and bright, colorful animation, and it’s just the kind of joyful romp we need right now.
In this movie, the titular princess Saira (Shabana Azeez), is the daughter of two lesbian queens Anne (Madeleine Sami) and Leanne (Jordan Raskopoulos), who are beloved rulers of the planet Clitopolis (notoriously hard to find) in a safe gay bubble of the galaxy. Everything in this universe is extremely gay, including the month (Gaypril), the media (“gayflix and chill”), and the decorations (“live, laugh, lesbian”). They have a Lesbian Ball every year, and every member of the royal family is able to summon a “royal labrys” — well, everyone except Saira, who was once voted “most boring royal.”
At the start of the movie, Saira is dumped by her hot bounty hunter girlfriend, Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel aka BVT), mostly for coming on too strong and for being into things like close-up magic instead of partying. However, Kiki immediately gets herself kidnapped by evil “straight white maliens” who need Saira’s royal labrys and are holding Kiki hostage until they get it. So off Saira sets on a very reluctant adventure, piloting a sexist spaceship from the 21st century.
On the way, she meets Willow (Gemma Chua-Tran), a nonbinary bisexual goth songwriter (a series of words I thoroughly enjoyed writing) who joins Saira in hopes of getting inspiration for her first solo-album after breaking free of the confines of the GayPop contract she was trapped in.
Throughout the movie, there are hilariously heavy-handed metaphors in this world where things are a bit flip-flopped from our world now. The colorful animation is fun and adorable and full of little gay tidbits, like when Saira is clicking through her computer and you see she’s downloading movies like, Raiders of the Lost Dyke, Groundhog Gay, and American Bi. Like I said before, despite it being animation, it’s definitely not for children; there is some nudity and off-screen/under-blanket sex stuff. The movie pokes fun at toxic masculinity, toxic relationships, and toxic parenting, all while being unapologetically queer.
The movie also features some really cute songs. It’s not quite a musical, but it’s musical-esque in the way some of the songs — or even sometimes snippets of songs — narrate the moment. (Also some of the songs used in the movie that weren’t written for the movie are by an Australian queer punk band called Stabbitha and the Knifey Wifeys. I couldn’t keep this information to myself.) Some of them are background melodies talking about how sad Saira is, some are sung by Willow trying to find her new hit, but they’re all really lovely and add even more magic and charm to the movie.
It’s not all just a whimsical romp through space, though. Under the glitz and the glamor and the jokes and the bits, there’s a really beautiful story about a person who has been told her whole life that she’s less than, that she has to change, that she isn’t good enough. She is desperate to get her ex back, because she feels like it’s the first time anyone ever chose her. But can she learn to choose herself?
At first, it can be a little worrisome how far they lean into the vagina vs. penis of it all (there’s even a royal pussy that is literally a sentient vagina, and the bad guys have a penis robot driven by a tiny sentient penis), but by the time they introduce the nonbinary bisexual, and when you realize that one of the literal queens of Clitopia is voiced by a trans lesbian, and there is a drag queen character and two drag queen voice actors (Kween Kong plays Blade, and Reuben Kaye plays the Safety Bubble), it’s easy to come to the conclusion that this is just for the bit, and not TERF-y nonsense.
Overall, I highly recommend this movie. The cast is incredible (and made up of mostly queer people of color) and the music is great. It’s a tight 90, really fun with a really sweet message, and stuffed full of extremely gay jokes and references and characters. Queer joy is a form of resistance and we need it now more than ever.
Lesbian Space Princess is one of those movies I wish I could travel back in time and show my freshly out 22-year-old self. It would have helped her know she wasn’t alone in feelings of self-doubt and self-consciousness. It also could have been road map to spotting gay toxicity she should have been able to see from gay space.
Lesbian Space Princess is currently playing at the Berlin International Film Festival and will hopefully be released later this year.
