This is a brave approach to film making as it bucks some genre expectations that might make a mainstream audience feel confused. This can be seen in IMDb reviews that oscillate from 1 to 10 stars.

On the surface, it is a broad comedy with a heart of gold, telling the story of Maddie, a food lover who is elevated to stardom at a soulless online food blog company. She has a nemesis Emily (Claudia O’Doherty) and a bestie, lesbian tough girl Deena (Kate Berlant), and a doting bear of a husband Jake (Eric Rahill).

What is different is that Maddie is played by director, writer and comedian John Early as a straight, cis woman. It takes a moment to realise that Maddie is not trans or in drag, and Early imbues her with a breathy ingenue quality, inspired he says in a taped intro, by Muriel’s Wedding’s almost absurdist comedy. The IMDb film bros are confused.

Once you take this on board along with the comedy performances and gags dialled up, not quite to 11 but maybe to 10.5, it becomes a heartwarming story of personal acceptance and friendship.

There are some lovely characters and performances – Berlant, perennially sunny Julie (Vanessa Bayer), and Maddie’s awful mother (Kristen Johnston) – and there is a bitterness along with the sweet in its ending.

I have been musing though, on the purpose of Early casting himself as Maddie. It adds a layer of meaning to the title, because narratively Maddie has several secrets, and this adds one more that we are aware of, but she isn’t. It is also played for laughs, with obvious humour in the way Maddie talks about her gender that the audience responded to that would be very different if Maddie was transgender.

Although Early says that it isn’t drag, it has all the hallmarks of what we understand of drag – lace fronted wig, padding, tucking, voice affectations – and so it definitely feels performative. If the character had been played by a drag queen, this would have still aligned with the humour, although Maddie’s femininity may have been more exaggerated.

Although I have some misgivings in general about female lead roles being played by cisgendered men, I like that this helps show a fluidity and breadth of masculinity and gender to a certain extent. It did feel a little bit like a vanity project – I want to do this so I will – but there is a wholesomeness to Maddie so that it is hard to take umbrage.