Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

Disturbing yet enthralling

Awesome Movie

A film with more than the usual spoiler issues. Talking about it in any detail feels akin to handing you a gift-wrapped present and saying, "I hope you like it -- It's a thriller about a diabolical secret experiment."

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

I have a very dark sense of humor, but I watched it because it had Deniese Richards in it, and was listed as a comedy. This is as much as a comedy as Flower of Flesh and Blood. Not one part even made me smile.

Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999): Dir: Michael Patrick Jann / Cast: Kirstie Alley, Kirsten Dunst, Denise Richards, Ellen Barkin, Allison Janney: Hilarious satire of beauty pageants and the deadly act of pride as beautiful faces conceal fuming hatred. The girls assemble in front of cameras and discuss their dreams then go through the pains and gains of preparations. Directed by Michael Patrick Jann who has an eye for comic timing and details the film with colourful sets. Kirstie Alley plays a past winner whose motives that are less than honorable. She represents the mother who pushes her daughter into where she once shined in order to relive the memory but her greed leads to downfall. Her daughter is played by Denise Richards who was given a gun and "aims to win" at the pageant. Kirsten Dunst lives in a trailer park with her mother and works at the local morgue. Dunst and Richards are not just at odds within the competition but also competing for the affections of the same male. Ellen Barkin is hilarious as Dunst's mother with a beer can burned into her hand after their trailer suffers an explosion. Allison Janney is also in top comic form as a friend of Barkin's who helps Dunst get preparation. Even the judges are out to lunch in their total lack of knowledge or experience in these events. It presents the false galore of judging physical beauty resulting in a comedy that is drop dead hilarious. Score: 10 / 10

There were a lot of really good films in the late 90s that came and went un noticed, some found an audience on VHS and others simply slipped away into the weekly rental section and stayed there until DVDs took over, resulting in such films being all but forgotten. It's a shame such a fate befell Drop Dead Gorgeous, a dark, funny and genuinely clever lampooning of the beauty queen pageant done as mockumentary.Drop Dead Gorgeous focuses on a film crew who are making a documentary about a local beauty pageant, interviewing all of the contestants and event organizer Gladys (Kirstie Alley) a former pageant winner who's daughter Rebecca (Denise Richards) is entering this year's pageant. Two things quickly become obvious: that ill fortune is befalling many of the entrants and the only serious contenders and Rebecca and girl-next-door Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst). Amber comes from a trailer trash family (Ellen Barkin plays her mother), and works making up dead bodies at the local funeral home. A young Brittany Murphy and Amy Adams also star.The film is well written, finding a good blend of darkness and humour and always keeping a light tone, which is the key to the film's charm. Some scenes verge on being brilliant and the performances, particularly Kirstie Alley, are all first rate.While the film can be enjoyed on multiple viewings, it's not really the type you watch over and over, which also would have counted against it as an appealing VHS purchase.Fun, dark and well made, Drop Dead Gorgeous is well worth tracking down.

This could have been really awesome, but in the end, Drop Dead Gorgeous is the kind of movie that happens when people who don't really know anything about a subject decide to make a satire about it. Given that the focus of the movie, beauty pageants, is so deserving of ridicule, the script for this film is woefully unfunny or interesting. Further, the writers do a poor imitation of Fargo by casting every character as an imbecile with a Minnesota accent -- it just doesn't work. I've seen worse films -- but not too many more. I laughed out loud maybe twice, giggled on six occasions, and looked at my watch over two dozen times, especially in the last 30 minutes.