20 2000s Movies That Could Never Be Made Today

Before Disney began snapping up other studios like groceries, consolidating its many arms and properties in the process, it made and released some of its more adult-oriented films as Touchstone Pictures. And while the studio brought us classics all the way from Turner & Hooch to The Prestige, it also gave us Sorority Boys.

Frat boys Dave, Adam, and Robert (Barry Watson, Michael Rosenbaum, and Harland Williams) get unjustly thrown out of their fraternity (“KOK”) and take aliases as Adina, Roberta, and Daisy to find out what went wrong. Cross-dressed and ready to party, the three join a feminist sorority (“DOG”), employing secret cameras and dishing out roofies like candy. Fun stuff.

Now, in the noughties, transgenderism wasn’t as much of a hot-button issue as it is today, but the struggle was still real. Terms like transsexual, transgender, drag, and cross-dressing were often used interchangeably, without the stricter boundaries and categorisations employed today, and this meant there was more space for harmful stereotypes and caricatures to arise.

With sex jokes and gross-out gags being its primary vehicle for comedy, Sorority Boys is insulting to pretty much everyone who isn’t a heterosexual man, but it especially revels in dragging trans women and biological women through the mud in order to deliver a film that, in all honesty, wasn’t worth the effort to make. And you can be damned sure the script wouldn’t get anywhere near a Disney producer’s desk today.