Drop Dead Gorgeous

Drop Dead Gorgeous. Heh.

I remember watching this with K-10 -- it was the summer between our freshman and sophomore years of college, and we had subletted a tiny, craptastic apartment in a small house on campus. We had a pot-smoking drunk neighbor who we named Creepy Creepy, an apartment filled with save-the-earth cleaning products and "natural" tampons (the girl from whom we subletted was a bit of a tree-hugger, to say the least), and a bedroom with a huge mirror by the bed (the guys called it the porn room).

That was the summer I learned how to cover my can of Coke with foil if I couldn't finish it, that yoga and chips 'n' salsa are the two best things on earth, and that my sheltered, all-girl's-Catholic-school, best friend had an amazing sense of humor. A miracle, really, given that her crazy mother wouldn't let her watch much more than Little House on the GD Prairie (to this day I'm still trying to catch her up on 80s staples like The Karate Kid and The Goonies).

Drop Dead Gorgeous is a mockumentary set in the fictional town of Mount Rose, Minnesota, and follows the town through the Mount Rose American Teen Princess Pageant. The contestants are all high school girls competing for the chance to go to the state pageant, and they are all so very special.

Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst) and Rebecca Leeman (Denise Richards) are the front runners for the title of American Teen Princess. Two girls from opposite sides of the tracks: Amber lives in a trailer park with her mom (Ellen Barkin) and Rebecca's family is the richest in town. Amber is a talented, nice person, and Rebecca... not so much.

But, as most small towns go, the pageant is a huge deal for its residents. As one of the contestants (Brittany Murphy) states, "If you're 18, and you're not a total fry... it's jus whatcha do." The three judges are chosen from the town, and their characters do not disappoint (a hardware store owner with a retarded brother, a woman who works for Rebecca's dad, and a slightly creepy middle-aged man who says "young girls" waaaaay too many times).

Things move along fairly smoothly... until contestants start getting hurt and/or killed.

This is a dark comedy, though more "comedy" than "dark, " in my opinion. It's freaking hysterical, especially if you find the northern accent funny (Fargo, anyone?). Kirstie Alley is absolutely amazing as Rebecca's mother, Gladys, and Alison Janney is pitch perfect as Amber's mom's trailer trash best friend, Loretta. The script is great, with some hilarious one-liners ("Jesus Christ on a cross," "Mom still cries every time she sees a tilt-a-whirl or a fat lady in a tube top," and "Hey hey, Miss Penthouse '98, close those legs, I could drive a boat show in there."). The film drags near the end, but is still quite satisfying.

(And because imdb is awesome, I learned that the featured mall is not the Mall of America, it's the Eden Prairie Center - the same one used in Mallrats. Snootchie Bootchies!)

Right, so check out Drop Dead Gorgeous. It's funny, you betcha.