Jim Queen ★★½

“We are all about the G,” explains the fairy godmotherly drag queen Glamydia (Harald Marlot) to clueless closeted twink Lucien (Jérémy Gillet), explaining the rules of Nicolas Athané and Marco Nguyen’s raunchy romp through gay tropes and horny humor. It may be LGBTQIA+, but the hilarious homophile feature film debut of the French director-writer duo is made about, with, and primarily for the gay segment. That faction of the rainbow brigade consists in itself of various tribes, all with their own style and codes, many of which appear prominently in the queer quest for a cure to a dreaded new epidemic decimating the gay community: heterosis.

Its symptoms, as explained by Nina (Shirley Souagnon), the trusted female best friend of infected titular hero Jim Parfait (gay porn icon Alex Ramirès), are terrible: a sudden urge for monogamy, inexplicable knowledge of soccer rules, bad taste in fashion, and breeding (of human offspring). In its final stages, a former gay god like Jim, with his constantly growing crowd of admirers on social media and in reality, will cheer for France at the World Cup, surrounded by children (his own) and wearing Crocs. To escape this dismal fate and restore his 20 million followers, Jim must find shady Dr. Ragoult, who will extract an antidote from the only person immune to heterosis.

This, of course, is Lucien, who is madly in love with Jim but, due to his lack of flexing muscles, height, and followers, is below his league. Together they go on a queer quest, facing the Gaystapo, pitbull-like pet players, and the final boss of conservative conformity, Lucien’s wealthy health minister mother Christine Bayer (Elisabeth Wiener). As gloriously, garishly gay as Jim Queen and the Quest for Chloroqueer (thus the full title) is, it likely wouldn’t be debuting among Cannes Midnight Screenings if it wasn’t carefully calibrated for mainstream accessibility. Even straight people with zero connections to the queer sphere may know what bears, twinks, and poppers are, and the jokes never move beyond the cues. 

Though the colorful 2D animation in the nostalgic style of MTV’s adult animation series hides—no, actually, boasts—numerous visual gags, these are as platitudinous as the verbal punch lines. With jokes piled on as generously as in the giddy story, it wouldn’t matter much that not all of them work, but those that do work initially hardly improve by relentless repetition. Much like its titular hero, Nguyen and Athané’s animated adventure is bursting with self-admiration despite all its self-irony. Its best moments are the smaller side jokes addressing the gatekeeping within the community and its pressure to adhere to a uniform look, as well as the musical numbers parodying popular Disney fare. 

With its stellar voice cast and exaggerated eroticization of a specific male physique, its frank obscene jokes and snippets of gay codes, the sexed-up satire is sufficiently entertaining. But its largely harmless humor and naive naughtiness never live up to the initial promise of political provocation. The clash of Jim’s performative confidence and Lucien’s emotional insecurity only scratches the surface of the conflicting identities beneath queer culture’s unified surface. As an allegory of homophobic anxieties and historical reactions to AIDS, heterosis touches upon exclusion within the community but criticizes it only as superficially as the hierarchies based on body and social status. For a movie celebrating queerness, Jim Queen feels underwhelmingly straight.