Jump to the good stuff: The Story | Some Thoughts | The Final Verdict
The Story:
Big Easy Queens is a comedy about a New Orleans mobster looking to get rid of the competition.
Minnie Bouvèé (Eric Swanson) is a club owner, chanteuse, and the head of a mob. Her only rival is Poodles Makenzie (Jennifer McClain), a tough as nails woman who will stop at nothing to take down Minnie. When Minnie has Poodles’s crew murdered, Poodles decides to get revenge.
Soon a killer begins to stalk Minnie, and her estranged sister, Mimi Bouvèé-Truve (Benjamin Shaevitz, AKA Suzie Toots), comes back into her life. What does Mimi want from her, especially since they’d stopped talking after Minnie’s boyfriend, Jackson (Matthew Darren), left her for Mimi? Was Mimi sent by Poodles for nefarious reasons? Is Minnie’s assistant, Giuseppe (Alexander Zenoz), involved in the plot to kill her?
What follows is a story about murder and revenge.
Some Thoughts:
Big Easy Queens shows what happens when the people behind the camera don’t know what they’re doing. The camerawork is horrendous, the pacing is off, there’s no tension, it’s not funny, and the acting is mediocre at best. It looks and feels like a bunch of high school kids decided to make a movie over the weekend. All I can say is that choices were made, and none of them were good.
The film has the tap-dancing drag queen, Suzie Toots (credited as Benjamin Shaevitz), playing Mimi Bouvèé-Truve. When you see an old Fred Astair or Gene Kelly movie, the dance numbers are filmed to showcase the entire body. Not in this dog. The camera vacillates between Shaevitz’s upper torso and his legs, making it look as if the legs don’t belong to Shaevitz. Of all the bad camera angles in this film, of which there are many, this is the worse. A film should play to an actor’s strengths, not destroy them.
The talented Varla Jean Merman also makes a few appearances, and not even she can bring any joy to this turd of a movie. How she got roped into it is beyond me. I can only assume she’s friends with somebody involved and had nothing better to do.
If I hadn’t decided to review this movie, I would have turned it off after the first quarter.
The Final Verdict:
Big Easy Queens is a horror comedy that lacks humor and suspense.