- By Lauren Strickland

David Finnigan climbed up on to the wobbly stools, cleared his throat, and announced to the small crowd squeezed into Lonsdale Roasters: “This is not some detached, ironic commentary – this is about how we feel when we watch it.”

“We” was himself, Jess Bellamy, and fellow festival producer Adam Hadley; “it” was all things Disney. As the strains of a dubstepped mashup of classic Disney songs faded, Finnigan began a reading of Allen Ginsberg’s poem Sunflower Sutra – and I was sceptical that the night wasn’t going somewhere terribly hipster. Bellamy read Edward Dyson’s Bashful Gleeson, and Hadley read an assortment of Grimm and original fairytales.

In a matter of minutes the culture switched from high to low as the speakers launched into their monologues: retellings of some of Disney’s more ill-advised tween offerings. Finnigan gave a rapid-fire account of his experience watching Selena Gomez vehicle Monte Carlo while trapped on an international flight. He pondered how “freedom” is inevitably represented by a ride on the back of some young hunk’s scooter, and extolled the virtues of grand musical finales. He declared: “Disney doesn’t kiss you – or if it does kiss you, it doesn’t kiss with tongue, and if it does kiss with tongue, then it doesn’t kiss with finesse“. He parted with Jonas Brother-bestowed wisdom (the Camp Rock gem “Everybody grab a mic and a hat and follow me”), breakdanced, and bowed out. The crowd was in hysterics.

Jess Bellamy was drier – though equally foul-mouthed – as she summarised Lindsay Lohan’s Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen. A self-described LiLo anthropologist, Bellamy quickly, calmly, and with deadpan delivery, tore the film to shreds. She saw the film as a parable: Lindsay, darling, this is what not to do. (Lohan’s character in the film is something of a teetotaller, persuading the rock star male lead to give up his wild partying ways. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of Lindsay’s scandalous nightlife will see the irony in this.) Bellamy’s ultimate conclusion: a list of films, writers, actors, and uses of your time better than watching Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen.

And then Hadley took to the stage – to dissect Mean Girls 2, the sequel most didn’t know existed beforehand. If you’re perplexed about why he’d bother talking about this waste of celluloid, by the end it didn’t matter – listening to Hadley’s rant was infinitely more entertaining than watching the film could ever hope to be. This absurd recap of the equally absurd regurgitation of the first Mean Girls was a marvel to witness; Hadley’s brow dripped with sweat as he screamed what everyone who had ever seen Mean Girls 2 had all thought: “Where is Lindsay? Where is anybody? WHO THE FUCK ARE THESE PEOPLE!?”

At the end of each speech the crowd screamed like the trio were rock stars. Tokyo Tween Knife Brawl was exactly what was promised: a visceral, emotional response to some of the most uninspiring Disney films in existence.