This 1999 movie directed by Joel Schumacher is a kind of hackneyed romance with a twist. You know the drill: two mismatched characters meet, hate each other, learn to love one another, break up, and are reunited at the end.
The twist is that it's never consummated because the characters are Walt Koontz (Robert De Niro), a homophobic retired New York cop fallen into depression after a stroke renders his whole left side useless and his speech severely slurred; and Rusty (Philip Seymour Hoffman), a flamboyant drag queen saving up for sex reassignment surgery. The pair live in the same fleabag hotel in Manhattan, and Walt pays Rusty to give him singing lessons as a kind of speech therapy.
These are two good actors, and they do a credible job here. Some critics complain that Hoffman's character is over the top, but this criticism seems silly to me: he's a drag queen, for god's sake, that's how they are! Likewise, those who find De Niro's character wooden seem to be missing the point: he's half-paralyzed and can hardly speak: how emotive can he be?
Good performances aside, this movie is hampered by Schumacher's script, which is littered with extraneous plot lines involving stereotypical characters that detract and confuse: there's the fellow residents of the building (the weird old lady in the wheelchair, the bad guitar player mumbling songs about every lost love); there's a heartless drug lord shaking down everyone in the building looking for his lost cache; there's a drag queen beauty contest (for Miss Flawless, hence the film title) that engenders nasty fights amongst the contestants; there's a posse of gay Republicans trying to convince the drag queens to not be so - well, gay; there's a dance club once frequented by Walt with two prostitutes, one who he favoured who dumps him now he's disabled, one who he shunned who has a heart of gold... I could go on, but I think you get the picture. Too much going on for no real purpose.
I enjoyed this movie primarily for Hoffman's performance, but that's the best part of it. Only watch this if you're bored and there's nothing better to do. | 
