Reel Thoughts: Some Like It Butch

A popular hit on the festival circuit, Butch Jamie will be released on DVDNovember 18. It’s an ultra-low budget lesbian take on Tootsie, with a butch lesbian instead of Dustin Hoffman cross-dressing to get a part.

Jamie is a funny commitment-phobe who can’t get cast to save her life, even though she throws on a wig and girly clothes and affects a sweet accent. The casting directors see right through her. Worse yet, her roommate’s cat, Howard, has a commercial career Jamie would kill for!


All that changes when Jamie gets a callback for a film and is offered the part of “Steve.” The casting directors explain that it’s a low budget film and that the male actors they would cast cost too much. After hemming and hawing, Jamie agrees and puts on the worst fake goatee and sideburns I’ve ever seen. Before you can say Jessica Lange, Jamie has fallen for Jill, the beautiful costumer and vice versa.

Butch Jamie is rambling and scattershot, and its micro-budget really shows, but Michelle Ehlen is an engaging performer who makes her film more entertaining than it has a right to be. It’s refreshing to see a film with a cross-gender lesbian perspective, given that drag kings are coming into their own. They deserve a better film, but for now, Butch Jamie will do.

Watch the trailer here.

Review by Neil Cohen, resident film critic of Movie Dearest and Phoenix's Echo Magazine.