All The Queen’s Men

All The Queen’s Men

“All the Queen’s Men” is a great idea for a comedy, but it just doesn’t work. It’s dead. I can see it working in a different time with a different cast in black and white instead of color but not like this.

The film is about the “Poof Platoon,” four Allied soldiers parachuted into Berlin in drag to infiltrate the all woman factory where the Enigma machine is being manufactured. This story is said to be true. If it is, I’m amazed that such good material yielded such poor results. To impersonate a woman and a German at the same time would have been impossible and suicidal; how does the movie make it into a zany lark?

Matt LeBlanc from “Friends” stars as Steven O’Rourke, an American officer who has never quite completed his heroic missions (a.k.a., he always chickens out at some point). He’s teamed with Eddie Izzard as Tony, an old drag queen; James Cosmo as Archie, an old man; and David Birkin as Johnno, an intellectual weakling.

After brief lessons in hairdressing, makeup application, choosing flattering undergarments and espionage techniques (LeBlanc gets slapped after checking out his own butt in women’s clothes), they’re dropped during an air raid and try to make contact with Romy (Nicolette Krebitz), who works in her father’s cabaret theater.

Romy turns out to be beautiful and lovely smelling two attributes not necessarily required by this role but then we discover she lives underground because well, she’s a librarian. Not only that: She lives in a loft under the roof of her library so that (in one of many scenes defying belief) the spies are able to lift up a skylight window in order to eavesdrop on an interrogation taking place below them.

Their mission is to infiltrate the factory, steal an Enigma machine and return it to England. By this time, British audiences have seen “Enigma,” “U-571” and several TV documentaries about the Enigma machine and know that the British already had one. The movie has an answer for this, but it comes so late in the film that although it makes sense technically, artistically it’s a catastrophe.

The four misfit transvestites totter around Berlin looking like bad Andrews Sisters impersonators (which is unfair to impersonators). Meanwhile, O’Rourke falls in love with Romy. How we’re tipped off that he’s not a woman is less interesting than how anyone could have thought he was: He plays her as if determined, in every scene, to signal to the audience that he’s absolutely straight and only kidding. His voice doesn’t help; its uncanny timbre reminds me of Stallone’s mother or maybe Burt Reynolds’ father.

The action would be absurd anyway, but in a drag comedy it takes on additional dimensions of weirdness. There’s a sequence when Tony does Dietrich before an audience of Nazis who are so wildly enthusiastic I think they must be real Nazis. But surely they know he is not only not Marlene Dietrich but if not a spy then at least a drag queen? I’m not certain. The movie seems to suggest they think he’s sexy which will come as news to anyone familiar with Eddie Izzard, including Eddie Izzard.

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon’s portrayal of women in “Some Like It Hot” was the least convincing performance I have ever seen. We were sold the lie though, and it is still one of my favorite comedies. How come they succeeded when the Queen’s Men so clearly didn’t? Was it colored, apart from the obvious difference in talent?

Black and white works better for many types of comedy because it emphasizes dialogue and movement while downplaying fashions and removing emotional content from different colors. Billy Wilder insisted on b & w for “Some Like It Hot” because he did not think his drag queens would be believed in color by any audience and he was correct.

There is also an issue with casting. Matt LeBlanc has no business being here unless as a Nazi who thinks Eddie Izzard is a woman; he is totally miscast as lead, lacking lightness or humor or even sympathy for fellow spies, not to mention comic timing. This could be a b & w British comedy circa 1960 with Peter Sellers, Kenneth Williams, et al., but at this time with this cast this movie is doomed.

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