bh_tafe3 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.

annevejb The Spoiler flag relates to the politics of the second half of this comment. I find that I have several DVDs about beauty contests and this 1999 is the earliest and also the one with the lowest quality. Except I still find it rather watchable. An empty 'Gracie Lou Freebush' story (Miss Congeniality) that is very easy to watch. But there is more to it than that. The other stories I have are Miss Congeniality (2000) and Little Miss Sunshine (2006) and episode 2-29 of iCarly disk sets, iWas A Pageant Girl (2010). They all have bits of detail in common with DDG, I found it easy to get the impression that they were all looking to this particular story, but the common factor is likely to be elsewhere. These three also have a certain quality. This also has Brittany Murphy in one of the supporting roles, a contestant, and some will want to watch this just because of that. The cast list can please fans of some others, too. It is still an empty story, but that is not because of the cast and not because of lack of fun detail in the script. * The scrambled nature of the people who populate the world of Drop Dead Gorgeous. It reminds me of what is implied by the story of Donnie Darko, my title of Jim Fixed It comes partly from that. There is not a straight parallel between these stories, but they do have common links. The Chumscrubber (2005) talks about the USA. England has some of that disorder, too. October 2012, the UK has been inundated with horror revelations about another Jim. To write anything to support that particular Jim is to risk life and limb, but the bits that I have noticed make me consider him to be a victim, just as much as any of the characters in Donnie or this feature. Some bits I have read are just simple statements of UK Jim's actions, without actual detail of the actions, and these read like horror, the actions of a really bad guy. When if goes into detail, though, I am reminded of the cures that Tony Blair Witch equivalents have always pointed at the weak. The actions of UK Jim remind me of some of the side effects of this sort of popular field sport. Other actions of UK Jim tell me that he used to be considered as deserving, he got kicked in a way that the deserving grade of inept big babies get kicked, hard knock life. The October 2012 stories are people noticing these side effects and now considering him as meriting being kicked in the way that the undeserving get kicked. The UK Jim should be grateful that he is now physically dead. Drop Dead Gorgeous, if it is an empty 'Gracie Lou Freebush' story, I find it to be about the real world.

Gloria Ramos 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.

MBunge Drop Dead Gorgeous is an incorrigible satire that overcomes the doomed reputation of its genre to be one of the funniest films I've seen in a long time. Even when it's well done, satire tends to be more clever than comedic…and it usually isn't that well done in the first place. This movie spectacularly succeeds by not only offering up sharp takes on fairly obvious and easy targets, but also delivering delightful bits of lunacy that will make you laugh at everything from horrific eating disorders to physical mutilation.The story is about a documentary film crew that goes to the small Minnesota town of Mount Rose to cover the local qualifying pageant for the America's Teen Princess competition. They film and interview the pageant organizers, young contestants and their friends and family. The crew is also around to record the deaths and maimings that surround the pageant and always seem to benefit Becky Leeman (Denise Richards), the jaded and two-faced daughter of Gladys Leeman (Kirstie Alley), the pageant organizer, a former pageant winner and a stage mom desperate to relive her past glory. The only real competitor to Becky, at least the only one that luckily remains unharmed, is Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst). She's the good hearted trailer park girl who squeezes in tap dancing practice during her two jobs, one in the school cafeteria and the other putting make up on stiffs in the town funeral parlor.As you might expect, a lot of the satire of Drop Dead Gorgeous is aimed at the natives of Minnesota and the classic tropes of small town life. It's reflected best in some of the pageant contestants. There's the slutty cheerleader (Amy Adams), the drama club chick (Laurie Sinclair), the tomboy of ambiguous sexuality (Brooke Bushman) and the fat girl who loves her dog a little too much (Shannon Nelson). But these filmmakers then compliment those fairly obvious characters with some wonderfully off kilter contestants. One young woman is a future fag hag (Brittany Murphy), another lives her life as a tribute to her deaf mother (Sarah Stewart) and another is a white girl adopted and raised by Japanese parents that are pathetically desperate to assimilate into the good ol' U S of A.By adding bizarre and outrageous bits that are only trying to make you laugh, it makes the satiric and darker outlook of the film go down a lot smoother. Many satires fall into the trap of being self righteous or exploitative but because there's a different and separate layer of comedy running through the story, Drop Dead Gorgeous is just plain hilarious. As you react to the crazy, non-satiric jokes, it becomes easier to appreciate the humor underlying the satire. And since the non-satiric comedy is more over-the-top and potentially offensive than the satiric moments, it never feels like the film is being judgmental about these characters or their dreams.Helping things out is a cast that's as good as the material they're given to work with. Kirsten Dunst and Amy Adams are the highlights, both absolutely adorable and just close enough to being realistic to give their characters that extra oomph. Ellen Barkin is also great as Amber's "rode hard and put away wet" mother and Allison Janney almost steals the show as her outspoken and cougarish trailer park neighbor. The other actors are also very funny and screenwriter Lona Williams gives one of the best performances in the movie without saying a word. Denise Richards is…well, she's Denise Richards. If you've seen her in other films, you know what to expect. She's good looking and makes an effort, but there's just not a lot going on.Drop Dead Gorgeous is a movie about teenage beauty pageants that's so funny and bold, even a lot of high school boys could enjoy it…and I'm talking about heterosexual high school boys. I'm not sure there's any higher praise that I can give.