Too Much "Gorgeous" is Not Always a Good Thing

By Andrew Bender

Imagine an insular Minnesota farm town from which, we are told, boys can escape via either athletic scholarship or the prison system. For girls, however, the only path out is the "Miss Teen Princess America" beauty contest.

Such is the backdrop for "Drop Dead Gorgeous," the new comedy from screenwriter Lona Williams and director Michael Patrick Jann. This faux documentary centers on the conflict between the Leeman and the Atkins families, or, more specifically, their mother-daughter pairs, as contestants and those around them die in a series of coulda-happened-to-anyone (wink, wink) accidents.

The Leemans are the local beautiful people, and they know it -- owners of the town furniture store, ardent Lutherans and gun-toters. Mom Gladys (Kirstie Alley), a former Miss Teen Princess herself, has taken it upon herself to organize (and orchestrate) the local round of the pageant, which, of course, her daughter Becky (Denise Richards), is expected to win.

In a trailer park across town lives Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst), Becky's chief competition. Unlike Becky, the equally beautiful Amber is as unpretentious as the day is long. To make ends meet, she applies makeup to corpses at the local funeral home and washes dishes at her high school, and although she loves her chain-smoking, alcoholic mom (Ellen Barkin), all she wants from life is not to repeat mom's mistakes and to be the next Diane Sawyer. Guess who we're supposed to root for.

The setting may be modern (well, 1995), but such tales of merciless competition are timeless. Think Jacob and Esau or Cain and Abel.

The competition in this film leads to some wonderfully outrageous and surreal moments. Richards and Dunst, playing with high camp style, are a pleasure to watch, as are Barkin and Alison Janney, who plays her best friend. The movie is full of biting one-liners, and some of the gags are breathtakingly outlandish, if of questionable taste.

Just a few examples: Richards appears as one of the faces in Mt. Rushmore and dances with a life-sized Jesus doll on a cross; Dunst rehearses her act for the talent competition by tap dancing through her work at the funeral home; and the girls visit the sickly reigning Teen Princess in the hospital's Eating Disorders Wing.

Overall, though, the movie could have used another few minutes in the Easy Bake Oven. For instance, nobody but Amber seems to give much pause over the deaths. I suppose that in the age of "South Park," in which the same character dies in every episode, it was only a matter of time before the death of a peer is treated as an everyday event.

And of course, what Minnesota movie would be complete without mocking the local accent? Problem is, it was done so perfectly in "Fargo" that the filmmakers should have left well enough alone. There it worked because it was fresh and, ultimately, human, but here it's so cliché and demeaning that it's unfunny, like those sequences on "Saturday Night Live" in which the dead horse has already been beaten, twice.

Despite "Gorgeous's" attributes, the over-the-top treatment of the accent typifies much of the rest of the film and offers a lesson in the shortcomings of excess in general. Just as no one needs to kill to win a contest, no one needs to assault our senses to make a movie work.

Drop Dead Gorgeous. Rated PG-13, Running time 1:38

Director: Michael Patrick Jann, Screenwriter: Lona Williams. Cast: Kirstie Alley, Ellen Barkin, Denise Richards, Kirsten Dunst, Alison Janney