Rating: R
Genre:
Comedy
Release Date: 03/09/2004
SubTitles: English/Espanol
Dubbed: English/Espanol
Sound: DD2/DD1
Run Time: 94 Minutes
Flags: Brief Nudity, Nudity, Strong Sexual Content, Not For Children, Adult Language
Distributor/Studio: 20th Century Fox
Gore Vidal's best-selling
satiric novel gets an inarguably unique screen treatment in this off-center psycho-sexual
farce. Fussy film buff
Myron Breckinridge (
Rex Reed) goes to Europe and gets a sex-change operation from a slovenly chain-smoking doctor (
John Carradine) and returns to the United States as the glamorous and willful
Myra Breckinridge (
Raquel Welch).
Myra appears at the door of former cowboy star-turned-acting school entrepreneur
Buck Loner (
John Huston), who also happened to be
Myron's uncle;
Myra insists she's
Myron's widow and demands her fair share of
Loner's inheritance to her late husband.
Loner, suspicious of the appearance of
Myron's bride, tries to find a way out of giving her any of his money, while giving
Myra a job in his acting school to keep her busy.
Myra's new career allows her to make the acquaintance of
Leticia Van Allen (
Mae West), an aging sexpot and talent agent who represents "leading men only." Through
Leticia,
Myra meets alpha-male aspiring star
Rusty Godowsky (
Roger Herren) and his naïve girlfriend
Mary Ann Pringle (
Farrah Fawcett); as part of her own bid to ferment sexual anarchy,
Myra attempts to introduce
Mary Ann to the pleasures of lesbianism, while forcibly expanding
Rusty's sexual boundaries. In the midst of the action, director
Michael Sarne uses clips from dozens of vintage Hollywood films of the 1930s and '40s as a comic counterpoint to the story. Both
Gore Vidal and
Rex Reed expressed their dissatisfaction with
Myra Breckinridge after the film hit theaters, though
Vidal has also claimed not have seen the finished product; the film has gone on to develop a devoted cult following, despite the fact the film's only authorized video release has been out of print since the late '70s.
~ Mark Deming, All Movie Guide