Lesbian Space Princess ★★★

Released: 19 June 2026

Director: Leela Varghese + Emma Hough Hobbs

Starring: Shabanna Azeez, Bernie Van Tiel, Gemma Chua Tran

Lesbian Space Princess is for the Tumblr girlies and the Newgrounds gays.  The directorial debut of animator Emma Hough Hobbs and musical comedienne Leela Varghese (both Australian lesbians themselves) could not aim squarer for their target market of the chronically-online teenaged queer who would alternate between writing SuperWhoLock fan fiction, binging CollegeHumor animations, and yelling at bigots in comments sections if it had the assist turned to 1000.  This is a film for the kind of person so obsessed with the work of Rebecca Sugar that they’ll gladly drink down a halfway-passable imitation just to quench their thirst whilst waiting for another dispatch from the real thing.  I’m talking about a film for the kind of person who went all out trying to make Kate McKinnon the next big movie star in those halcyon days of the mid-2010s before the first Trump presidency and that Saturday Night Live performance of “Hallelujah” ruined brunch for everyone.

I recognise much of that paragraph is going to read as either total gibberish, nostalgic comfort food, or incredibly mean-spirited dunking on whether or not you fall into that demographic.  This is a movie thoroughly uninterested in appealing to anyone outside of its cult.  Hell, it might even scan as a touch hokey and outdated to some of those inside it.  (For the record, I do count myself amongst that demo; just replace “SuperWhoLock” with “Korrasami” and Rebecca Sugar with the Gravity Falls Extended Universe team.)  As much as Varghese & Hobbs’ tale wishes to also talk to and provide solace for young insecure lesbians who worry that they’ll never be good enough, their film entrenches itself so deep into its comfort zone that it’s drawn up air-tight succession ownership plans for the next five generations of offspring.  The jokes are easy lay-ups, the psychological platitudes lifted from Cartoon Network shows at least a decade old, and the politics make Greta Gerwig’s Barbie seem nuanced and subtle by comparison.

And yet, whilst frequently rubbing up against my own tolerance for this kind of self-effacingly cozy queercore (again even as someone who is typically down for it), Lesbian Space Princess is charming.  Earnest and easy to a fault but in a way that’s hard to dislike, assuming the merest exposure to online comedy doesn’t make you break out in hives.  I’m not being reductive in that assessment, either.  Hobbs’ art style and production design may have been driven by the pastel colour palette of Rebecca Sugar and the smooth rounded edges (even on the fonts) of Matt Braly, but the (by necessity) limited animation and sparse backgrounds call to mind web comedy animation groups like Mashed in the editing rhythms and intentional geographic instabilities between shots.  Where the boarding and scale are focussed less on creating a clear space with striking compositions, and more on facilitating the next joke both visual and audible.

It’s right there in the opening scene where cripplingly introverted Lesbian Space Princess Saira (The Pitt breakout Shabana Azeez) – from the planet Ciltopolis, a place that’s “surprisingly hard to find” in the Gay-lexy, and yes that is the kind of humour you will largely be dealing with – gets dumped by her cool womanising bounty hunter partner of two weeks Kiki (Bernie Van Tiel).  The sequence operates in a shot-reverse-shot rhythm where Saira and Kiki each take up the left and right side of the screen respectively, the couch they’re sitting on getting longer , with Kiki moving further away from the foreground, each time it cuts back away from Saira.  The dialogue alternates between clumsy run-on sentences and just slightly-awkward-enough pauses to give the impression that the actors are riffing in the booth, with jokes that run on just long-enough to either loop back around to being funny again or start grating a bit.  And the scene tops off by the shot improbably pulling back to reveal that said dumping actually happened in Clitopolis’ big arena in front of Saira’s parents and the whole general populace on her birthday; the kind of gag that might end an above-average online sketch.

All that is before sketch troupe Aunty Donna enter the film, to cement LSP’s internet comedy and Australian bona fides.  They play three Straight White Male-ians who promptly kidnap Kiki in the midst of rebound sex as part of a plan to lure Saira to their Mancave so they can steal her magical labrys and power their chick magnet.  However, since Saira can’t actually summon her labrys, being incontinently insecure and drowning in self-loathing, she must first go on a journey to unlock that power aboard the Problematic Ship (Richard Roxburgh) – named so because it’s forever on the verge of falling apart, a lampshade joke about Saira’s relationship with Kiki, and because the ship itself is a red-pilled manosphere bro who struggles to understand basic pronouns.  Joining her on the trek is Willow (Gemma Chua-Tran), a non-binary Gay-Pop singer-songwriter who sees the good in everything and is trying their best to write some hit songs (which make one realise just how hard it is to successfully pull off being Rebecca Sugar).

As is the way with adult animation, there are bursts of black comic violence, sex and horniness as punchlines, and self-conscious deployment of swear words throughout.  But the energy, both in the kinds of jokes told and the general vibe of the narrative, is decidedly wholesome and free of the mean-spirited edginess one has grown to expect.  The puns are groan-worthy but in a good way, the kind that prompt sensible chuckles rather than derision.  The lampshades just about stay on the fun side rather than feeling like attempts to excuse lazy storytelling.  The treatment of Saira’s mental health is 100% earnest, never being played for cheap dismissive over-emotional punchlines, and even managing to put together a low-key powerful visualisation of reconciling with one’s queer trauma to self-actualise at a crucial point in the narrative.  The jabs taken at White cis male/incel behaviour are all (almost proudly) low-hanging fruit material of the kind whose best-before date was around Gamergate – they’re whiny virgin babies who think they’re owed sex for buying a woman a drink and will explain Magic: The Gathering mechanics in excruciating detail unprompted – but the voice work still manages to get some genuine laughs out of that stone… at least until the Straight White Male-ian resolution goes for the cheap punchline we definitely should’ve left back in the early-10s.

In fact, the vocal performances are the biggest reason why Lesbian Space Princess works as well as it does. Tiel gives Kiki the right amount of womanising smarm where you can hear the shit-eating smirk behind almost everything she says and therefore don’t feel too bad about her captivity.  The Aunty Donna guys – specifically the troupe’s main performers Mark Bonanno, Zachary Ruane and Broden Kelly – bring their loose-leashed manic energy to the Male-ians and are the primary reason why any part of the script manages to get proper laughs rather than just polite titters.  Their confident ignorance on basically everything finds the sweet spot between the group’s own distinctive sketch work and the Saturday morning cartoon villain butt-monkeys that the Male-ians are written to be.  In addition, drag queen King Kween shows up to delightfully chew some scenery as Blade, a nightclub owner/therapist with a lust for bladed weapons.

Whilst they get the laughs, it’s Azeez who grounds the film.  LSP’s biggest creative risk is its willingness to make Saira a very frustrating protagonist.  A young woman so lacking in confidence about her abilities and so bereft of self-worth that she throws herself into and pines for an obviously toxic co-dependent relationship without hesitation, and takes forever to grow from her experiences without back-sliding.  It’s certainly an accurate and relatable characterisation, don’t get me wrong, but it’s also something that is in constant danger of trying a viewer’s patience.  Azeez ensures that doesn’t happen.  Her vocal deliveries never feel put-on, Saira’s apologetic tics and efforts to make herself feel so small as a defence mechanism feel entirely earnest in Azeez’s voice.  You can hear the contrast when Saira lights up at being able to show off her magic trick skills to someone who is genuinely interested for once, whilst a recurring manifestation of her depression sees Azeez strip all feeling out of her voice so you can tell what parts of herself Saira still has left to lose if she can’t self-actualise.  That work is what keeps Saira as somebody you want to root for and allows Hobbs & Varghese’s gamble to pay off.

It’s enough to make one wish that Lesbian Space Princess took even more creative risks.  A less-obviously telegraphed narrative, a slightly more unique voice better in-step with queer/lesbian culture of the 2020s, jokes with more bite than digs about men obsessed with Reddit karma and gags blatantly lifted from Fairly OddParents.  But, by and large, Hobbs & Varghese stick firmly to their early-2010s comfort zone and don’t budge for love or money.  In a way, that is admirable.  You cannot accuse Lesbian Space Princess of not knowing its audience, what they want, or withholding from them.  You’re either in its cult of magical girl anime-loving, Pride sticker-adorned laptop-owning, acoustic guitar at open mic night-performing, therapy-attending queers or not.  Even then, you might wish for something more fulfilling, but it’s also hard to begrudge a little lightweight comfort food in these times.