At first sight, Richard Day's Girls Will Be Girls appears to be essentially the same film as the recent Die Mommie Die!, but there are crucial differences. The cheap, ugly, mean-spirited, poorly lit Die Mommie Die! starred a cross-dressing actor (Charles Busch) portraying a miserable, hateful, sexually voracious show-business has-been whose ambition and backstabbing make her family miserable. In sharp contrast, the cheap, ugly, mean-spirited, poorly lit Girls Will Be Girls stars three cross-dressing actors, one of whom (Jack Plotnick) plays a miserable, hateful, sexually voracious show-business has-been whose ambition and backstabbing make her roommates miserable. The exceedingly game Clinton Leupp and Jeffery Roberson co-star as Plotnick's roommates, Leupp as a woman obsessed with having a child by the doctor who performed her many abortions, and Roberson as a good-hearted starlet intent on getting discovered at Schwab's drugstore, just like "Tina Turner." The bitchy, acidic one-liners fly fast and furious, but only a precious few hit their target, and the unrelenting nastiness of the gags involving rape, abortion, and undersized genitalia leave a bitter aftertaste. The film's show-business setting pays off only in the brief-but-amusing disaster-movie parody that represents the apex of Plotnick's long-faded stardom. Leupp and Roberson at least try to invest their characters with some pathos, but their best efforts are largely for naught. The Independent Film Channel is distributing Girls Will Be Girls; perhaps its executives failed to realize that this kind of mirthless, tacky independent film sends traumatized audiences racing back to the glossy production values on display at the local multiplex. "Audiences require at least a shred of humanity," Leupp informs Plotnick, explaining the failure of the latter's career. Day's script and direction gives his characters just that–the tiniest shred of humanity, and no more.