‘Lesbian Space Princess’ Revives the Weird, Wild Spirit of Old-School Adult Animation

Part of the problem with adult animation as a concept is that it’s been so thoroughly appropriated by corporate media it’s hard for anything bearing the genre label to show the made-in-the-garage edginess that used to be associated with Adult Swim. Futurama is now a brand in its own right; Rick and Morty have spawned other similar brands. But Lesbian Space Princess, which comes to us courtesy of the South Australian Film Corporation, hearkens back to a time when animation didn’t used to be quite so proud of its own cleverness, with surrealist jokes desperately trying to cover for the obvious lack of budget.

Lesbian Space Princess ★★★★ (4/5 stars)
Directed by: Emma Hough Hobbs, Leela Varghese
Written by: Emma Hough Hobbs, Leela Varghese
Starring: Shabana Azeez, Bernie Van Tiel, Gemma Chua-Tran, Richard Roxburgh, Kween Kong, Aunty Donna
Running time: 100 minutes

Lesbian Space Princess features Shabana Azeez of The Pitt as Saira, the titular princess who, on her 23^rd birthday, is still incapable of manifesting her labrys. Though the double-headed Minoan axe has been appropriated as a symbol of Lesbian pride, it’s likely the audience don’t know that, and the writing team exposit it with a solid Wikipedia gag. Lesbian Space Princess takes place in a gay, magical universe that isn’t clearly explained and doesn’t really need to be. It kind of feels like a riff on She-Ra and the Princess of Power, but only really in the sense that overly fabulous empowerment culture doesn’t leave a lot of room for mere ordinary princesses.

Lesbian Space Princess hearkens back to a bygone era of adult animation where even its most arcane references are still presented in such a way that they land as solid gags in context, usually because they show up as a belated awkward climax to an entirely unrelated core joke. I honestly didn’t think it was possible in this day and age to make a solid joke about The L Word but what can I say? Aunty Donna killed it with all the gratuitous banter about the pronunciation of the word “lesbian.” The Australian accents so elevate that sequence I was left wondering whether it sounded as funny to an Australian ear.

Aunty Donna, the increasingly popular Australian comedy troupe, voices the Straight White Maliens. These are the three villains of Lesbian Space Princess, though “villains” is a strong word for these characters who are presented with a surprisingly amount of sympathy in their quest to build a chick magnet. The big “MEANWHILE” breaks which depict the silly, pathetic ways the Maliens kill time while waiting for Saira’s arrival actually serve as great breathers while Saira continues on her own journey to build up her self-confidence.

Despite being a princess, Saira feels bad about herself and is unhealthily affectionate toward her badass girlfriend, the bounty hunter Kiki. These two have nothing in common, leading to a break-up, and then Saira’s desperate attempt to win Kiki back by rescuing her from the Straight White Maliens. Much of the story’s humor comes from how it toys with audience expectations — setups that seem straightforward but turn out to be slyly misleading, landing twice: once as a quick laugh, then again as you realize how pointed they are. In an early scene, for instance, Saira seeks advice by typing desperate questions into a search engine. It’s the far future, so the AI’s more advanced than what we know today — but its replies still alternate between unhelpful, painfully obvious, and comically vague. Given that Saira’s main flaw is her paralysis as a shut-in, there’s something almost moving about her plea for a machine to solve her life for her. Her arc, both literal and symbolic, is about learning that she can’t live inert — she has to shut off the autopilot and take control.

It definitely helps that Lesbian Space Princess clearly cares more about Saira as a character than making any kind of political statement. Even the straight white maliens don’t really have much of an agenda, a parallel that makes for a surprisingly family-friendly statement despite Lesbian Space Princess featuring bare breasts, among other imagery not suitable for work. Having been raised in Clitopolis (this planet is easier to find than you’d think!), Saira’s insecurities are just… not being fabulous enough, basically. So she’s completely unfazed by archaic 21^st century problematic language, yet she’s still prone to collapsing into a flood of tears at the slightest emotional provocation.

It’s borderline brilliant how Lesbian Space Princess is able to skewer fragility culture while still indisputedly being about as queer as a sci-fi comedy can possibly get. It helps that this movie makes fun of a lot more discourse-neutral targets at the same time, like clubs with music so loud it’s literally impossible to hear anyone saying anything. There’s a lot more you can probably do with a nightclub run by a drag queen shrink who loves weapons. But a complicated gag just can’t measure up to characters yelling at each other, unable to hear anything, and we can’t really hear them either without the subtitles. Comedy caricature characters are funnier when they have to suffer through the same real-world crap as the rest of us!

If there’s any weak spot to Lesbian Space Princess, it’s the music. Although I’m still not sure to what extent the acoustic guitar riffs are supposed to be intentionally terrible. A big part of the joke in Lesbian Space Princess is how genuinely hard it is to tell how deliberately stupid some aspects of it are supposed to be. Some of the cost-cutting animation tricks were so obvious I laughed when there wasn’t even a pretense of a joke on-screen. Was this supposed to be funny? Does it matter? I laughed plenty so, as far as I’m concerned, Lesbian Space Princess did its job.