{"id":650164,"date":"2026-05-18T10:52:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-18T10:52:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/650164\/"},"modified":"2026-05-18T10:52:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-18T10:52:11","slug":"jim-queen-review-french-gay-animated-comedy-tells-old-jokes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/650164\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Jim Queen’ Review: French Gay Animated Comedy Tells Old Jokes"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOne goes to Cannes<\/a> to see the highest of high-minded cinema, bold and searing visions from the world\u2019s foremost auteurs. We peek in on the social upheavals of contemporary Romania, explore the fringes of city life in Tokyo and Seoul, roam the lonely foothills of Anatolia, experience the bustle of Dakar, examine the fraught history of Chile. It is an enriching experience, to see what the planet\u2019s premier and emerging film artists have newly dreamt up.<\/p>\n

\n\tSometimes, though, one needs a little break from all that heavy stuff. Which is just what the French animated comedy Jim Queen<\/a> offers this year. Directed by Nicolas Athane and Marco Nguyen, Jim Queen is a crass, profane, giddily stupid romp through a heap of stereotypes about gay life in Paris. It\u2019s teeming with jokes about prostate orgasms, about tops and bottoms, about fetishes and bodily fluids and G\u2019d out party bois. It comes as a welcome shock to the system here at this august, black-tie film festival. I just wish the movie was funnier and fresher than it is.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tJim Queen\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\tThe Bottom Line<\/p>\n

\tReheated nachos, minus the carbs.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\tVenue: Cannes Film Festival (Midnight Screenings)
Cast: Alex Ramir\u00e8s, J\u00e9r\u00e9my Gillet, Shirley Souagnon, Fran\u00e7ois Sagat
Directors: Nicolas Athane, Marco Nguyen
Writers: Simon Balteaux, Marco Nguyen, Nicolas Athane, Brice Chevillard
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t1 hour 30 minutes\n\t\t<\/p>\n

\n\tJim Queen follows the travails of Jim Parfait (Alex Ramir\u00e8s), an Instagram hunk of the highest order who is lusted after by all who come into contact with him \u2014 online or irl. He\u2019s got the ideal physique, the ideal amount of hair (on his face, chest, and head), and he\u2019s as bitchy and cliquey as one would expect from an alpha gay at the apex of the pecking order.\u00a0Only a steroid-addled rival, Pavel, dares to question Jim\u2019s position. (He\u2019s voiced by gay porn icon Fran\u00e7ois Sagat, for those in the know about such things.)<\/p>\n

\n\tDown at the bottom of the hierarchy, or really not ranked at all, is Lucien (J\u00e9r\u00e9my Gillet), a fey and cosseted twink of privilege who longs to meet Jim but is kept at home, safely away from anything gay, by his domineering mother. We see \u2014 in a musical number amusingly evoking \u201cPart of Your World\u201d from The Little Mermaid \u2014 that Lucien has amassed a staggering array of the props of gay life, mostly sex toys. Only, he has no one to use them with, and is too insecure to do much of anything on his own. He seems destined to remain stuck in the virginal, satin-lined closet, pining hopelessly for Jim and the out-and-proud existence he represents.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tBut fate brings Lucien into Jim\u2019s orbit at the onset of a pandemic sweeping the gay community, a disease called Heterosis, which turns the afflicted into something shockingly hideous: straight men. Perhaps the most chuckle-worthy aspect of the film is the fun it has imagining what turning straight might look like: a sudden interest in football, an urgent desire to breed (in the biological sense, fellas), a complete ignorance of any queer culture. Jim tests positive and, much to his horror, sees his abs winking out of existence one by one. Before long, he is totally shunned from the scene that once adored him. Only Lucien, still with a massive crush, will help Jim on his wacky, dangerous quest to track down a cure.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tHere Athane and Nguyen rather carelessly traffic in AIDS allegory, which clangs badly against the movie\u2019s otherwise silly, lighthearted demeanor. The filmmakers have, I suspect, seen their fair share of South Park, and they are trying to mimic the edgy, point-driven provocation of that show at its best. But their comedy isn\u2019t sharp enough to thread that tricky needle. They are better suited to naughty sight gags and broad satire of the gay milieu (as they see it, anyway).\u00a0Though I could certainly do with a slightly less condemnatory tone about drug use; the film has a curiously conservative streak in that regard, which undermines its egalitarian, one-love message.<\/p>\n

\n\tThe movie\u2019s chief mission is to tear down the walls that, in the film\u2019s rigid schematic, hopelessly divide the gay (male) world. Jim must learn to accept a skinny femme like Lucien, while Lucien learns the valuable lesson that Instagram hotness is sometimes attached to a vain, rotten personality. (Duh, kid.) Jim Queen feeds into (and off of) the trite tribalism of so much creaky gay fiction, but ultimately wants to tear down that paradigm and establish a healthy kind of pluralism for all M4Ms.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tWhich is a noble aim, though the parable might register more potently if Athane and Nguyen looked beyond the most obvious of clich\u00e9s. Too often, Jim Queen feels like a 101 primer for straight people, albeit one that is plenty blunt about particular sexual mechanics. Gay audiences will likely crave more nuance and originality; we\u2019ve seen some version of Jim Queen\u2019s basic homosocial taxonomy many, many times before. If you\u2019ve watched any edition of Drag Race, from anywhere in the world, in the last 17 years, you already know these jokes by heart.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\tCredit to the animation<\/a>, though \u2014 bright pops of artistry that alternately evoke Steven Universe and Rick and Morty. It\u2019s not terribly sophisticated, but Athane and Nguyen do a lot with a fraction of the average Pixar movie\u2019s budget. They show a particular flair in the action scenes toward the end of the film, which take on true cinematic heft in convincing mock-blockbuster fashion. <\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019m eager to see what these filmmakers do next, now that their gay fantasia on irrational themes is done. May any upcoming project break new ground, rather than sifting through the waste bin of decades of gay comedy and pulling out the hoariest bits. I think we\u2019ve well and truly figured out what bears and daddies are by now. Class dismissed, forever hopefully.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One goes to Cannes to see the highest of high-minded cinema, bold and searing visions from the world\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650165,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[12874,18451,252484,32176,276723,88,280549],"class_list":["post-650164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-animation","tag-cannes","tag-cannes-2026","tag-cannes-film-festival","tag-cannes-film-festival-reviews","tag-entertainment","tag-jim-queen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650164"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650164\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650165"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}