This film is about a bunch of strange characters living at and about a rundown hotel in NYC. Many of them are "drag queens" and they are having their annual contest for the "Flawless" female impersonator, thus the name of the movie.
Walt (Robert De Niro) is a retired, decorated cop who has a mild stroke while responding to a disturbance in the hotel. As therapy he is advised to take singing lessons from Rusty (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Their relationship as neighbors goes from antagonism to mutual respect by the end of the film. Money and crooks are involved, and Rusty wants to get enough money to have his operations and drug therapy to become the real woman that is inside him.
Some of the film is funny, some of it too "over the top" with the drag queens. It moves slowly in places, in others there are both good guys and bad guys shot and killed. While I enjoyed the viewing experience for its novelty, I probably would not recommend it to friends. I give it a rating of 7 mainly on the good acting of De Niro, and the superb acting of Hoffman as the drag queen. We saw him in "Almost Famous" recently plus "Magnolia" and "Talented Mr Ripley" and he is without a doubt one of the finest actors working today.
I saw the DVD and while it is fine, it is nothing extraordinary. And, there are no extras at all, which is disappointing. I'm sure there at least could have been some very funny deleted scenes.
Walt (Robert De Niro) is a retired, decorated cop who has a mild stroke while responding to a disturbance in the hotel. As therapy he is advised to take singing lessons from Rusty (Phillip Seymour Hoffman). Their relationship as neighbors goes from antagonism to mutual respect by the end of the film. Money and crooks are involved, and Rusty wants to get enough money to have his operations and drug therapy to become the real woman that is inside him.
Some of the film is funny, some of it too "over the top" with the drag queens. It moves slowly in places, in others there are both good guys and bad guys shot and killed. While I enjoyed the viewing experience for its novelty, I probably would not recommend it to friends. I give it a rating of 7 mainly on the good acting of De Niro, and the superb acting of Hoffman as the drag queen. We saw him in "Almost Famous" recently plus "Magnolia" and "Talented Mr Ripley" and he is without a doubt one of the finest actors working today.
I saw the DVD and while it is fine, it is nothing extraordinary. And, there are no extras at all, which is disappointing. I'm sure there at least could have been some very funny deleted scenes.