User Reviews

I started out hating this film, but in the end I liked it. It does suffer a lot, from cinematography to editing to sets, etc. But what can you expect from low budget? On the other hand, the story (when I could follow it) was cute as were the actors, whether they were butch lesbians or a femme sailor boy. I'd have liked to see what would happen if this had been given the budget of, say, Pirates of the Carribbean. That's never going to happen, and it's a shame. Cinema is where we go to experiment and dream, and this film does that in ways that the usual Hollywood (or Canadian) fare shy away from. Even films geared to a queer audience tend to fall into predictable categories and pre-fab plot lines. So, while I only give it a 6 (let's be real), I do think it is valuable in a way that isn't captured in the rating.

Girl King won the best lesbian feature at Ottawa's Making Scenes Gay and Lesbian Film festival when it showed. This honour is mostly attributable to it being the only lesbian feature that played that year.

It is hard to know how to properly express the horror that was this movie. The production values were disastrous - it appears to have been shot somewhere off the coast of Northern British Columbia, judging by the fir trees that appear in the background and the grey overcast skies. Cutting in stock footage of parrots in palm trees didn't disguise this fact one bit.

The plot is hopelessly awful. It consists of drag king pirates on a quest to find the lost "Koilos" of the pirate king, and some extremely long scenes of the king wailing about her lost koilos. I was wailing in pain as well, but we were waiting to see the second movie in the double feature, so we couldn't walk out - which would have been my advice to anyone else unfortunate enough to be in a room with this film.

This was a great movie. It was very stylised and grainy on purpose. It was digitally shot and then converted to Super8 or something like that [16mm?]. That is where the Graininess is from.

There were porn scenes in it! Brave. It's my first film by this director and she was taking questions at the screening I went to. She didn't intend it to be a serious film. But I consider play to be a serious issue myself.

I like how it played with ideas of gender and in the end... well it was all mixed up in a good way. This Challenges our notions of gender and the roles of masculine/feminine even within the gay community. Funny moments certainly.

The setting is a magical land of sexuality. It is so nice that the actual place they shot this is the gulf coast islands off of BC. I think the budget was very small ~70,000$ I take that into consideration with my review.

A downside might be that it is too obscure for some. The context is from a sort of feminist gay cultural point of view. Not a movie for people sticky to details about things making always making sense. But, It's very enjoyable even if you are not from any particular culture or scene. You just need to keep an open mind.

This is a trickster film, whimsical and fun. I wish this film was more widely distributed. I saw it at cinematheque a while ago and back then no DVD had been publicly released.