ZsaZsa Zaturnnah Ze Moveeh

ZsaZsa Zaturnnah Ze Moveeh is about a gay gender-changing superhero that fights giant frogs, flying exploding zombies, and hot alien women that are out to destroy all men. Or at least change them into women. And there will be musical numbers along the way.

If that doesn’t sound interesting to you, run away quickly.

Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah is a completely bizarre Filipino movie based off a musical play (which was based off a graphic novel). The special effects are cheesy and low budget, the acting varies from good to terrible, and the script is about as weird as anything I’ve seen come out of Japan or Turkey. It’s apparent that the movie had a message it wanted to get across about gayness, feminism, and tolerance but the message gets lost among the schlock and goofiness.

Ada (who also goes by Adrian) is a gay man living in Manila.  After getting his heart broken one too many times he moves to the countryside with his niece Aruba and opens a beauty parlor. One night while singing in the shower, Ada is hit in the head by a strange meteorite with the word “Zaturnnah” written on it.

This is where the movie starts getting weird. Ada’s rather idiotic best friend Didi tells Ada that the thing to do with meteorites is to swallow them, because that will give you super powers. Ada, Didi, and Aruba eventually agree that this is a good idea even though the meteorite is five times bigger than Ada’s mouth.

Against common sense and all odds it turns out that swallowing meteorites does give you super powers, and it also changes your gender.  After shouting “Zaturnnah”, Ada turns into a  red-haired woman. The ladies celebrate by having one of the numerous song and dance numbers that assail you during the film. Didi asks Zaturnnah (which is what Ada's female super-powered identity will be called) if she has any powers other than being obscene.
 
It turns out that Zaturnnah has a number of other super powers, including the ability to throw giant cardboard trees, jump high into the air, do sloppy-looking kung fu, slow time, and use crappy-looking Matrix special effects.

The movie then proceeds at warp speed ludicrous.  The town is attacked by an extremely goofy-looking giant frog. Zaturnnah tries to battle the frog but it swallows her alive. I knew the movie had gone completely off the deep end when Zaturnnah started having a kung fu fight against pirate skeletons inside the giant frog for no apparent reason. Not that you could give a reason for fighting skeletons inside a giant frog that would make sense.

This insanity is followed up with a musical act during a kung fu battle with flying, exploding zombies during which the zombies sing backup. Yes—the zombies fly, explode, and sing. Zaturnnah attempts to get closure on a painful episode from her past during this musical kick-fest.  And then the villagers blow up the zombies with the bright and sparkly colored power of god, or something. I'm not really clear on that part, to be honest.

And eventually Zaturnnah must deal with the hot alien babes in a horribly fake CGI ship who want to destroy men everywhere.  Be prepared for a singing, dancing, bikini-clad showdown between the alien Amazonians and Zaturnnah.  Can she stop them, or will they turn men everywhere into unattractive women?

While all these crazy things are occurring Ada still has to deal with the everyday life of being a lonely gay man in a small town.  Will he find love with Dodong, the hunky guy who runs a food stand? Or is Dodong infatuated with Ada's alternate identity Zaturnnah?  Will Ada's friend Didi stop falling down and injuring his penis? These parts of the movie are more like a soap opera than the rest of the film, but Rustom Padilla (who plays Ada) is a much better actor than most of the other people in the movie, so the slower parts aren't entirely tedious.
 
Zsa Zsa Zaturnnah Ze Movie is about as weird as it gets. It’s a lot of fun in a campy, good-natured, bad movie way. Highly recommended to people who seek out extremely strange films from around the world.