Lesbian Space Princess

“She’s a lesbian, she’s in space, and she’s also a princess (oh, and she’s very sad!),” trills a musical interlude over this very Australian for-adults-only animated adventure’s title card. And if that sounds endearing as opposed to toe-curling, this candy-coloured inter-gay-lactic voyage, clearly inspired by Rick And Morty and streaming service Adult Swim, might be for you.

Princess Saira (voiced by The Pitt’s Shabana Azeez) is the painfully insecure daughter of the two queens of queer planet Clitopolis (“famously hard to find!”). Overshadowed by her uncaring but universally adored mums, incapable of summoning her “labrys” (her destined all-powerful lesbian weapon), and dumped by her super-hot bounty-hunter girlfriend Kiki The Destroyer (Bernie Van Tiel), things are looking pretty bleak. Early on, first-time filmmakers and IRL couple Leela Varghese and Emma Hough Hobbs launch into a hilarious homage to The Twilight Saga: New Moon’s break-up montage, with Saira staring glumly out of a window to a funereal soundtrack and screaming into a pillow à la Bella Swan having been ditched by Edward Cullen.

It’s all rather hit-and-miss, and your mileage may also vary with some of the cutesy musical sequences.

But the film’s funniest moments mostly, and unfortunately, come from the Straight White Maliens, a trio of incel extraterrestrials who kidnap Kiki and lure Saira into handing over her labrys to power their Hot Chick Magnet, obviously. Voiced by the comedy trio Aunty Donna, they’re a brilliant marriage of performance and character design, resembling strips of blinding-white gum with permanently petulant blue eyebrows. There’s a refreshing looseness to their scenes as they ineptly role-play approaching women in bars (“I wore a nice shirt to this bar”, “It’s making me horny”), and over-explain the rules of a RPG featuring a character named Big Titty Sorcerer.

It’s a bit of a shame the same can’t be said of all the stabs at humour, which often feel dated and overly safe, relying too heavily on stereotypes or tired gags about monstrous penises. As Saira journeys across space in search of both her labrys and Kiki, she encounters various quirky characters, from a sentient problematic spaceship (a fun turn by Richard Roxburgh) who acts like an Aussie lorry driver, to drag royalty Blade (Kween Kong) and upbeat singer-songwriter Willow (Gemma Chua-Tran). It’s all rather hit-and-miss, and your mileage may also vary with some of the cutesy musical sequences.

And yet despite its flaws, it’s hard not to be charmed by this scrappy, deeply silly sex-positive sci-fi fantasy. Saira’s true mission, to overcome her literally monstrous self-doubt and love herself without a super-hot girlfriend, feels like a timeless one, and will undoubtedly resonate with LGBTQ+ audiences.