This is one of those rare docs that paints a grand picture of an era and makes the journey feel like a party.

The Cockettes weren't talented, exactly, yet the bedazzled flakiness of their passion takes you closer than just about any movie has to what was once really meant by the term ''free-spirited.''

Brilliant new documentary.

Joyously re-creates the brief but resplendent reign of the legendary freakadelic drag troupe.

Cue the footage of Cockettes in spangles and glitter, high-kicking and belting out show tunes at the top of their lungs. Damn, it looks grand.

The Cockettes is a grand place to visit, even for those who wouldn't want to live there.

It puts The Cockettes into social, political and popular cultural context and gives the documentary a moving resonance.

The film does leave you with the lingering regret that you missed a hell of a good party. It is, as the kids used to say, a trip.

A fascinating, richly detailed documentary about the legendary queer collective based in San Francisco in the late '60s and early '70s.

Has the glorious, gaudy benefit of much stock footage of Those Days, featuring all manner of drag queen, bearded lady and lactating hippie.

This comprehensive and charming film not only recalls those days exactly, it also manages the wonderful trick of taking us back there along with it.

Looks like Weimar decadence and feels like down-home friendship.

An absorbing primer in one of the most fascinating chapters in American social history.

Revisits the San Francisco of the late 1960's and early 70's, a time and place so encrusted with legend and cliché that you might wonder if there is anything left to say. It turns out there is quite a lot -- which the filmmakers have brought triumphantly to life.