For the people that haven't seen RuPaul's Drag Race this might seem like an odd title. And honestly that goes for the rest of the movie, cause 99.99.99% of this movie is reference humour, either to RPDR or other camp gay culture. By the way an acting challenge is a type of challenge in every RPDR season where the competing drag queens have to act in a campy and comedic short, some of these can be funny and some of these are not funny. This movie falls in-between the two (although relatively better scripted than any of those challenges).
So, in The Bitch Who Stole Christmas we follow Olivia, a girl who's been working every Christmas since a child is ordered by her boss(adoptive mother) Hannah to report about a crown that is given out every year to a winner in the Christmas loving town of Tuckahoe. When she arrives to Tuckahoe she quickly befriends the town's outsiders to enter the competition and get that crown.
Let's start with some of the positives. I think this is such a fun idea to make, a more queer and campy twist to the usual Christmas time movies that we get. The drag queens casted are phenomenal and fun, I love that Jaymes Mansfield gets a fairly major role and some other queens get a more deserving shine on the spotlight. Ru is also deliciously campy despite some of the problems of her presence in the script (I'll get to it later). Also there's some fun celeb cameos.
And now to our negatives which seem to outweigh some of the positives. Let's start with what the viewer sees in the movie, Michelle Visage narrating in a Christmas cabin. I love Michelle Visage, she can be funny and has some really great charisma but it was unclear as to why she was a narrator? Was she a citizen of Tuckahoe? Why does she know about this story? If this was perhaps a part of a Christmas anthology with some connections to the story then it would've been passable but I would've loved to see more of a connection that the narrator has to the story.
And now let's talk about plot... for a relatively simple premise they sure didn't spend a lot of time trying to make the plot make sense, I didn't understand why it was so important for Olivia to write about a crown in Tuckahoe, they could've made that so much more clear. And the boss, Hannah, seems to change motives mid-plot which was so confusing. Everything could've been made much clearer.
Speaking of clearer, let's talk about Tuckahoe, for those of you who don't watch RPDR Tuckahoe is a fictive place that's generally (but not always) used as a setting for these acting challenges (the name is a play on the act of hiding your d**k through duck tape which is called tucking). And what first hits me when I get to revisit this place is why not go all out with it? Why not make every citizen a drag queen? That would've been so much more fun plus more drag queens get casted! It was very unclear why that town was special in the movie (Christmas loving?). For me personally it was a very big missed opportunity in cementing this place and building upon its campy lore. I was kind of disappointed to see there were a myriad of regular non drag queen people living on Tuckahoe... why? Maybe it's expensive to hire RuPaul drag queens just to be in the background but my idea still stands I think, they should've made Tuckahoe a drag queen only place.
Speaking of only drag queens I think that it is such a shame and missed opportunity to cast a regular girl actor as the leading role for this movie, don't get me wrong I think she does an ok job but goddammit I want to see at least a queer person at the helm of this movie, considering this is an RPDR-type of fare there should've been a drag queen casted as the main role instead. There's so many RPDR drag queens who could've carried the movie excellently and made it more fun. It seems like they casted the role of Olivia to appeal to the more casual non-queer demographic of RPDR watchers but I honestly think it was so ill-fitting. I want to see drag queens not regular people.
Which leads me to the next criticism, even if it is very much a RPDR-type of fare the drag queens in this movie are SEVERELY under-utilised, and I mean it. It's such a shame that "The Broads" in the movie (consisting of Ginger Minj, Peppermint, Jan and Brooke Lynn Hytes) are just not used particularly well, despite each of them having such charisma (which somehow appeared despite them being so under-utilised). They still made me laugh but I wish they would've been used more and got developed more as characters. None of them really get their own small narrative or use in the story (see Paddington movie, that does this with each of its main secondary characters that despite having simple plot motivations and everything, feels much more satisfying to watch cause it's all connected). Also Brooke Lynn's Russian accent... I understand what they were going for, but in the oeuvre of RPDR drag queens that particular character is mainly attributed to Katya... maybe it was a riff on Katya? Maybe not? Either way they could've made it stand out more and made it more "Brooke Lynn Hytes"- I mean she's so funny and has such a glowing charisma and personality, just watch her host Canada's Drag Race which makes her a phenomenal queen, so to see her do a Katya impression is a bit of (again) a missed opportunity.
RuPaul... from the poster of the movie and the marketing that I saw (last year tho when it was a Paramount + exclusive) it seems that she was gonna have a much bigger role than what we get to see here. Instead we see a weirdly detached and green-screened villain-type of character that just doesn't feel like she's a part of the movie at all. And RuPaul is FUN! She has shown that she can carry acting chops into the deliciously camp territory which she does here but she just does not have any presence in the movie, it's like they deliberately wrote her role so that she would have as little to do as possible... perhaps to give space to the other drag queens? I WISH! This movie doesn't have a drag queen main character. Instead we get regular girl and RuPaul appearing sometimes on a green screen.
Which leads me to the next question, who is this film even for? The main demographic is obviously RPDR fans but to me it appears they want to have a wider appeal as well which makes the movie not commit to what it truly is, camp. They should've gone all the way honestly. No matter the demographics. Which is confusing to me because of the type of humour it does, it relies way too much on reference and "aware/self aware"-humour which can be too on the nose and confusing for someone who perhaps doesn't watch drag race. Some of the references might fly over peoples heads, but it's so confusing how they made the movie try to be wider-appealing but at the same time be for RPDR fans which doesn't work at all- they should've committed to one line, not both.
All in all, this was an okay watch, it got some laughs out of me and I'll probably watch it again with some friends or something (that watch RPDR). But it's such a missed opportunity in so many ways that I can't with an honest heart give a high rating, but at the same time I wish they could do more films like these. They don't have to be oscar-worthy plots but they can be funny and campy, we LGBTQs need that, especially in such a lonely and trying time as Christmas.
