I've been following the progress of Angela Robinson's D.E.B.S. with interest ever since the POWER UP-funded short film it was based on debuted to much applause at Sundance a year ago and was subsequently chosen by Sony's Screen Gem division to be turned into a feature film. It seemed unusual for a short film with such explicit lesbian content--and happy/funny lesbian content, not the usual depressing lesbian characters we find in mainstream films--to get this kind of attention from a large production/distribution company.

While Robinson assured us in an interview last year that she was not pressured by Screen Gems to tone down the relationship in the feature film ("if anything," she said, "we worked together on the script to make the relationship more complex and intimate"), I couldn't help wondering whether the relationship would still get eased out somehow, since there hasn't been a comedy/action film with a decent lesbian relationship in years.

Then I wondered whether the film would even be any good, since often what's funny in a short film doesn't translate well to a feature-length movie (witness all of the Saturday Night Live skits that were turned into terrible features).

Fortunately, a few weeks ago at this year's Sundance Film Festival, my questions were finally answered when I joined a sold-out crowd applauding loudly after the world-wide premiere of D.E.B.S. (scheduled to hit theaters in March, 2005).

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