The Movie:

Stephan Elliott's Academy Award winning 1994 film The Adventures Of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert proved to be a bit of a sleeper hit when it was first released and it's remained a popular title on home video in the years since. The film stars Hugo Weaving as a man named Tick who works in Sydney as a drag queen under the name Mitzi in a cabaret show he performs in alongside another drag queen named Adam (Guy Pearce), who guys by Felicia, and a transsexual named Bernadette (Terrance Stamp). While Adam is quite confident in his status as a gay man, Tick turns out to have a bit of a past - not only was he once married, he has a son.

When he gets the call from his ex-wife, he and his two co-stars throw all of their costumes into a giant bus they dub Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert and head across Australia through the Outback to the small town where she runs a resort. Of course, the bus breaks down along the way and they wind up stuck in the middle of nowhere until a kindly sixty-ish man named Bob (Bill Hunter) decides to help them with their mechanical troubles. Eventually, after his 'eclectic Asian mail order bride' leaves him, Bob decides to go along for the ride and as they travel across the continent, the group discover love, discrimination, homophobia, didgeridoos and ping-pong ball tricks.

As strong as the performances, however, is the script. There are quite a few clever and unpredictable situations worked into the storyline and on top of that there's the dialogue, consistently sharp as a razor and almost always funny. It might be cliché to portray the characters with as much catty sass as they've got here, but that doesn't matter when it works as well as it does in this movie. As the characters head towards their destination there are, of course, lessons to be learned by and from all of them - it wouldn't be a road movie if the trip didn't change the characters somewhat, but it's never heavy handed or preachy. The character development works to pull us into the story and we can't help but like the characters, as bitchy as they are throughout the film. The end result is a raucously entertaining film that's as well acted as it is beautifully shot, full of good humor, great characters and loads of style.

Video:

Adventures of Priscilla, Queen Of The Desert arrives on Blu-ray in a very colorful AVC encoded 2.35.1 widescreen 1080p high definition transfer that generally looks very good indeed. The colors of the costumes pop right away and you'll continue to be impressed with them from the opening scene to the closing, but pay attention during the scenes that take place out in the desert and notice how nice the red hues of the sand look when they contrast against the open blue sky. Skin tones look nice and natural, while texture is strong throughout. There are some tiny but noticeable bits of print damage here and there in the form of some specks but these certainly don't ruin the film, and neither does the pleasing level of grain present throughout playback. Black levels are good, contrast is fine, and this offers way more detail and texture than DVD was ever able to - for that reason alone, fans will want to consider this. But wait, there's more!