To Wong Foo Thanks for Everything, Julie Newmar

Calling To Wong Foo campy doesn't do the film justice: The film camps it up but still allows us to believe in the characters. Snipes and Swayze are so successful in exploring their feminine sides that all of their future roles should be played in drag. Read full review

OK, it's a formula picture, but the ingredients are lively and combined with style by director Beeban Kidron. Read full review

Wong Foo is pure fantasy and sets up the cross-dressers as avenging spirits of fun, frolic and frisky style. Like samurai cleans ing a village of its criminal scum, they transform Snydersville from a drab, dusty whistle stop to a wonderland of wigs, sidewalk cafes and spontaneous dance parties. Read full review

Douglas Carter Beane's script is so wickedly clever (the title refers to an autographed photo the drag queens carry with them), you come away from this film with the impression that you've had a much better time than you've actually had. Read full review

British director Beeban Kidron chooses screenplays that balance precariously between maudlin and quirkily comic. To Wong Foo, richer in character than story, fits right into her repertoire. Lucky for her that Swayze, Snipes and Leguizamo have plenty of fashion sense.

Tone is everything here, and the film never loses the smiling poise and benevolence that help you buy its gauzy plot as the three sashay through it. Douglas Carter Beane's script is witty as well as buoyant, which is a big help. [08 Sep 1995, p.99]

Thankfully, To Wong Foo . . . has a heart. It leaves us optimistic. Kidron and neophyte script writer Douglas Carter Beane seem to think that regardless of environment and situation, our differences are key to our survival. They celebrate the fundamental need for acceptance and integration. [08 Sep 1995, p.F5]

It isn't a movie to embrace (except for Leguizamo's brilliance) but it deserves one of Noxeema's air kisses - a passing, passionless show of affection, and then we're off to the next party. [08 Sep 1995, p.8]

A mix of drag comedy and inspirational road movie, Wong Foo is surprisingly, sometimes exhilaratingly good. [10 Sep 1995, p.4C]

Directed by Britain's Beeban Kidron, To Wong Foo has a split personality—it feels like three separate spliced-together movies with the same characters. Part I is the most fun, as we watch Swayze and Snipes undergo their transformation, a la Torch Song Trilogy. Read full review

When Leguizamo lets go, this cautious crowd pleaser of a film takes on a defiant shine that shows just where the rest of Wong went wrong. Read full review

I feel like recommending the performances, and suggesting they be transported to another film. The actors emerge with glory for attempting something very hard and succeeding remarkably well. They deserve to be in a better movie. Read full review

As a mainstream Hollywood film about men in skirts, the assumption here is that drag queens Make Accessories, Not Love. Even if you're offended by this, or by the attitude that all of life's problems can be solved by a change in decor or lipstick color, or off-put by the assumption that every town in America between the two coasts is populated by rednecks, there are things to like about Wong Foo. [08 Sep 1995, p.03]

Enjoy the sharp humor and the performances of the leads, but don't look for a great movie. [08 Sep 1995, p.E3]

The stars at least keep Wong Foo watchable. [08 Sep 1995, p.7D]

Though he and his co-stars tackle their roles with mischievous humor, Beeban Kidron's direction stays flat even when the actors are funny. Read full review

Ultimately, the comedy comes across as a celebration of openness, alternative lifestyles and bonding, all life-affirming values that in the 1990s are beyond reproach — or real controversy. Read full review

If there’s any shock value left to seeing a couple of matinee idols dressed up in women’s clothing, the drag-queen comedy To Wong Foo, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar gets it out of the way fast. Read full review

Despite the stars best efforts this is neither funny or original. Read full review

It's hard to dislike so genial a picture about guys in gowns (although only Leguizamo would pass muster at a drag ball: Swayze seems to be doing a third-rate impression of Joan Crawford, while Snipes just comes off as a man in a dress); still, it's basically an elaborate denial of homophobia -- which is no help to anybody in a country where people get killed for cross-dressing. Read full review

It's low camp for narrow-minded Middle Americans who can't cope with the idea of a co*k in a frock. Read full review

Unconvincing and annoying, a miscalculation on numerous fronts, it is finally sugary enough to make the sentimental Priscilla play like a model of icy restraint. Read full review

To watch To Wong Foo is finally to be reminded that camp-meisters often have a weakness for sentimentality that is far more appalling than anything they do in the name of outrageousness. [08 Sep 1995, p.17]

It's more interested in enlightening than entertaining, and Kidron seems to go out of her way to sap the life out of every scene. It's a horribly directed movie. [08 Sep 1995, p.5G]