Maxxie LaWow: Drag Super-Shero lip syncs to save the world 

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome -Images courtesy of Breaking Glass Pictures
17 Jun 2025 -

Simon is a shy barista who works, with his best friend Jae, at The Pink Unicorn coffee shop. He has a crush on a regular, the hunky Calvin whose standard order is a "glitter latte with glitter foam and an extra shot of glitter." On his 21st birthday Simon (Grant Hodges) plans to finally drink legally at Tuckertown's gay bar extraordinaire, The Skirt and Girdle, run by the formidably maternal Mama Mumu (Michael-Leon Wooley). Jae (Erika Ishii) intends to get Simon laid. While taking out the trash, Simon finds a whimpering pink wig creature being menaced by three vicious cat-like monstrosities. Simon rescues the wig which then, reminiscent of The Blob, engulfs him, and Tuckertown, before dissipating, leaving Simon with a vibrant pink do that tingles and sparks. His mother hates it but Jae is sure it will attract the men at The Skirt and Girdle. Will it attract Calvin? What other effects has the mysterious living wig with its erratic superpowers had on Simon? Who is the glamorous queen Dyna Bolical (Terren Wooten Clarke) and what is her evil plan for the drag queens and gay folx of Tuckertown? All is to be found in the animated feature Maxxie LaWow: Drag Super-Shero.

As a superhero origin story, Maxxie LaWow: Drag Super-Shero is a slim one, the creatures disappear never to be heard from again let alone be given any context, the superpowers are never explained and are erratic if entertaining. But this isn't Marvel, this is marvellous. As a coming out story about gaining confidence, or a manual on dispensing attitude, Maxxie LaWow: Drag Super-Shero is a comic delight. Simon's wide-eyed awe when stepping into the crowd at The Skirt and Girdle, with its robotic musclebound go go boys and potent Purple Peacock cocktails, is a nostalgic throwback to every gayby's first entrée into a gay nightclub. The plot is murky and convoluted but mainly exists to allow the animated queens to be fabulous, witty and catty. And for creator/director Anthony Hand to riff on horror films, action films, Beaches, various drag superstars, and a certain reality TV show that gives the final battle between good and evil, queen vs queen in outer space, its tagline: "lip sync for your life." Coherence may be inconsistent, but the spirit of queer joy and gleeful transgression runs rampant.

The animation is more South Park than Pixar, but with so much glamour, glitter and shade on display, the budget constraints are only noticeable in the nightclub and Jersey Dunes 2 backgrounds. A transformation scene, from Simon to Maxxie, is breathtaking in its simplicity and power; we feel and experience, the inverse of An American Werewolf in London, the magnitude and potency of going from twink to queen. Musically, Maxxie LaWow: Drag Super-Shero is driven by a catchy dance beat score courtesy of Dave Volpe and Electropoint (Roman Molino Dunn) with vocals by Angie Fisher. The supporting characters are voiced by an all-star cast including Jinkx Monsoon, BenDeLaCrème, Monét X Change, and Rosé. And Laraine Newman guesting, and Jeffrey Bowyer-Chapman as the dreamboat Calvin. Running almost two hours, feeling like a too short set from a favourite drag queen, there isn't time for digging deep but the delicious Dyna Bolical does get a back story to explicate her magnificent malevolence. She says of her plot for world wide cosmetic domination, "Drag queen tears have a unique chemical property not found anywhere else in nature." And she is going to harvest those tears.

The thematic through line of empowerment is ecstatic, Mama Mumu states that "No-one is born drag, drag is what you become." For Simon and the audience that is a fierce message, even if Maxxie LaWow is a bit of a bitch on multiple occasions. A sub-theme of the addictiveness of the cosmetics—a warning about crystal meth? Which certainly, metaphorically, could equate with drag queen tears—and the zombification of Bolical's elderly victims is balanced with Maxxie LaWow fretting that it might be ageist. But this is a cartoon, a world that obeys its own rules derived from Gay 101. Calvin disappears for far too long and the triangle with detective Jack Elation is underdeveloped, but this is a superhero movie, not a rom com or a turgid gay romance. When Dyna Bolical slinks across the stage, torturing a hapless himbo, or Maxxi LaWow, her name always followed by a choir of unseen queer angels giving harmonic praise, pole dances, Maxxi LaWow: Drag Super-Shero takes comic and euphoric flight. For all of us who were glued to Saturday morning cartoons as kids, intellectualized the appeal of cartoons as adults, and mourn the passing of predecessors Super Drags and Q-Force, we can only pray to the great gay gods that Maxxie LaWow has many more adventures.