Despite the fact that we’re getting a title that sounds like a 1990s Cinemax late-night erotic soiree, Lesbian Space Princess is a bit of a throwback of it’s own in that it borrows from the Joe Biden-era of extreme liberal sensibilities where everyone was picking up animation that was geared towards specific demographics as opposed to picking up projects that appeal to all demographics. Granted you never know what’s going to be a hit and I think streamers like Netflix learned that the hard way but Lesbian Space Princess clearly wears it’s influences on it’s sleeves but does it do enough to stand on it’s own?
Fans of Steven Universe are already going to feel right at home with Lesbian Space Princess because the feature-length film from Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese looks like it could be plucked RIGHT from that universe in more than a few ways. Right off the bat the character designs and dialogue sound like Rebecca Sugar’s thumbprints are all over this thing though the plot is clearly old-school Rick and Morty back when the show was actually good during the show’s first six seasons.
The adult animated science fiction comedy film features the voices of Shabana Azeez, Bernie Van Tiel, Gemma Chua-Tran, Richard Roxburgh, Kween Kong, and comedy troupe Aunty Donna and was written by the aforementioned directors before going on to win A$600,000 in screen production grant funding for their script not unlike a similar path the likes of Michael Cusack and the guys at Glitch Productions took to eventually gain their own successes.
The premise of the film follows a space princess (Saira voiced by Azeez) who is thrust out of her sheltered life and into a galactic quest to save her bounty hunter ex-girlfriend (Kiki voiced by Bernie Van Tiel) from the Straight White Maliens (voiced by Aunty Donna). A rather paint by numbers premise but the proof is in the pudding and overall this 90-minute space-romp does a hilarious job of proving the ends doesn’t always justify the means.
Personally, Lesbian Space Princess seems like a great idea more for a TV series than a whole film but the execution of it all has me thinking it kind of doesn’t matter because I do think this is the kind of springboard that that will make it so this isn’t the last we’ve heard from Emma Hough Hobbs and Leela Varghese. In the wide world of premises and scripts largely derived from Twitter/Reddit threads this is one of the better efforts.