MQFF REVIEW: First Period (2013, Dir. Charlie Vaughn)

Suspension of disbelief is the name of the game with Charlie Vaughn's riotous camp-fest First Period. Two fully grown men frocked up as high school girls and attending school with a throng of other middle-aged men and women playing teenage boys and girls. It's practically 'Beverly Hills, 90210'.

Brandon Alexander III is Cassie Glen, Totally Rocking Superstar Extraordinaire (you're welcome!). She's the new kid at school. She's big and she's uninhibited and she's more than a little wrong. It's her first day at school and, as these things go, before she can even say "John Hughes" she's managed to put the school's reigning cool kids (you know, the super beautiful, up themselves ones) offside.

Barely deterred, she teams up with the school's resident outcast, Maggie (Dudley Beene), and the pair hunt out ways to ingratiate themselves into popularity. If they can't find a way, they can just kill everyone (Maggie's got a bit of a fixation).

It all gets pretty tasteless but it's never disrespectful. That's a fine line to walk and the film makers walk it well. What's more, taking into account that Vaughn and his team have pulled this together with next to no resources, the laugh to dollar ratio is well above average.

Look, First Period isn't quality cinema but it is a hell of a lot of fun. If this sort of thing is your thing (is it even a thing that this can be someone's thing?), your boat will be well and truly rocked.

★★★

Trailer:

First Period screened as part of the 2014 Melbourne Queer Film Festival.