Philip Seymour Hoffman is good (if one-note) as a drag queen in New York City who makes nice with the neighbor he hates: security officer and now stroke-victim Robert De Niro. The antagonistic relationship between the two might've used a bit of smoothing over (occasionally it feels like they're winging it, and De Niro's speech impediment tends to vary), but with two terrific actors running the scenes, there are compensations. De Niro himself looks fantastic, and he doesn't try to command the picture or any of his scenes with Hoffman; he's such a team player that you automatically respond to him. A drug-czar subplot is old hat, and the dancehall girl-with-the-heart-of-gold stuff is an obvious cliché (it's all been done before). But the real problem with the movie is that times have changed and perceptions are different, and not all gays are drag queens and not all drag queens want to have sex-change operations (it's such a moldy myth that one wonders if writer-director Joel Schumacher is totally out of touch and actually believes the stereotype?). The continual foul language is a strain to listen to, but the growing camaraderie between the two leads proves to have some interesting give-and-take. **1/2 from ****
Review of Flawless
