Mean * 1 ’ ~1
■ Uneven acting and a
script filled with tired
tricks doom beauty
pageant parody.
By Samuel McKewon
Editor
While watching “Drop Dead
Gorgeous,” it was hard not to be
reminded of much better movie just
like it, an HBO movie entitled “The
Positively True Adventures of the
Alleged Cheerleader-Murdering
Mom,” which starred Holly Hunter as
a woman so obsessed with her daugh
ter’s success that she was willing to
kill others for it
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“Drop Dead Gorgeous,” a wanna
be satire about beauty pageants, tries
to run the same course with a much
less worthy cast of participants and a
script that misses as frequently as it
hits. The crazy matriarch here is
Kirstie Alley, a far less skilled actress
than Hunter, even in her familiar
realm of comedy.
Alley’s Gladys Leeman runs the
Mount Rose, Minn., segment of a
national beauty pageant, a crown she
won 17 years earlier. Now her high
school daughter Becky (Denise
Richards) is up for the award, and
mother not about to let any obstacle or
girl stand in the way.
Only one girl realistically can:
trailer-trash sweetie Amber Atkins
(Kirsten Dunst), a yokel who works at
the funeral parlor and idolizes Diane
The Facts 4&j|
Tltlt: Drop Dead GorgeousP^^^^
Stan: Kirsten Dunst, Denise
Richards, Kirstie Aley, Elen Barton
Director Michael Patrick Jarw
Rating: PG-13 (language, people dte,
others throw up)
Running Time: 93 minutes (133)
Grade: C
Five Words: "Drop Dead" mean
spirited, uneven
Sawyer. She fears that she and her
mother (a trashed-up Ellen Barkin)
might get clipped if she becomes too
much of a threat to Becky.
The realism of such an episode,
which strikes home in “Texas
Cheerleader-Murdering Mom”
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because ifis a true story, is shaky here.
But that’s not the point of former
pageant contestant Lona Williams’
script, which better serves a mocku
mentary-style sendup by ridiculing an
event that can resemble a meat maricet
* Which makes me wonder why
murder is even part of script It doesn’t
detract from the story as much as it
doesn’t exist, popping up during a few
choice moments. It isn’t annoying,
just unnecessary to the movement of
the plot
Beyond it lies a reasonable satire
of beauty pageants, plus a few need
less jabs at the mentally retarded and
anorexics. Directed by Michael
Partrick Jann, “Drop Dead Gorgeous”
is highly mean-spirited, and generally
makes fun of those in the North,
whereas “Fargo” simply embraced the
persona. *
Some of the acts are funny (One
girl does a speech from “Soylent
Green”, another dances with Jesus on
a cross). Others are largely stupid.
Only Dunst, a 17-year-old bur
geoning talent that has wisely chosen
smaller roles in good movies (“Wag
the Dog”, “Little Women”) survives
unscathed and turns a generally good
hearted performance as the girl who
deserves to win, but likely won’t.
She’s only character that creates
laughs through personality and not
script contrivances.
As good as she looks, Richards
isn’t much of an actress. She should be
nominated for the Karate Kid award of
playing someone entirely too old play
ing young. (Richards is 27, and her
body passed teenager status eons
ago).
In fact, it’s her, Alley and Barkin s
performances that ring most falsely.
Alley seems to be delivering lines and
Barkin’s role is simply too stupid for
her to do anything with it. The last half
of the movie, Barkin lies drugged up
in a hospital room, the survivor of a
fire (set by Alley’s character, assum
ably) that leaves a beer can melted to
her hand. This joke is milked for all its
worth, plus five more.
Inevitably, the pageant arrives and
tensions between Amber and Becky
blow up. A winner is crowned. By
then, the movie’s charm has worn off
and its ready for a tidy end. But “Drop
Dead Gorgeous” ,drags on for another
half-hour, rehashing jokes that had
been rehashed twice already. Not only
does the movie rip off other movies,
but it rips off itself.
For this genre to be done right, a
certain credibility, however hokey, has
to be lent to the script. I knew “Drop
Dead Gorgeous” was dead soon after
arrival when a mentally challenged
man ran into a window he mistook for
a door. For a movie that wants to be
fresh, funny and hip, it relies on too
many of the oldest, worst tricks in the
book.
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