Cinema
Drop Dead Gorgeous (12, selected cinemas)
Hollywood ignorance
Mark Steyn
The funny thing about all these mock documentaries — The Blair Witch Project, Waiting for Guffinan, Drop Dead Gorgeous — is that the genre they're mocking — the documentary — barely exists in America. Indeed, I wouldn't mind betting that most of the young movie-goers who made Blair Witch the box-office hit of the summer have never ever sat through a real full- length documentary. The distinguishing feature of Drop Dead Gorgeous is that its fussy director, Michael Patrick Jann (from MTV), seems never to have sat through One, either. The documentary form seems useful to him mainly as a way of putting him at one remove from the narrative and characters, thereby enabling him to patron- ise his material more easily.
Most mockumentaries pick targets that are already self-parodies — amateur dra- matics (Guffinan), political campaigns (Bob Roberts), the rock biz (This is Spinal Tap) — but, even by the form's own standards, Drop Dead's barrel seems excessively well- stocked with fish. Its subject is teen beauty pageants. And, just to make life even easi- er, Jann sets his competition in Mount Rose, a fictional small town in Minnesota, enabling him to get in some additional sniggers at funny-talking hicks. Between Garrison Keillor and Fargo, Minnesota is beginning to seem a bit over-exposed as an instant comedy playground.
Jann has a good cast — Wild Things' Denise Richards (the next Bond girl) does yet another rich-bitch routine as odds-on favourite Becky; Kirsten Dunst is her main rival, a winsome trailer-park cutie; and Kirstie Alley and Ellen Barkin are their respective moms; oh, and Adam West (from TV's Batman) is in there, too. Jann's writer, Lona Williams, was once second runner-up in a Minnesota beauty pageant, which embittered perspective she's brought to bear on the script. Miss Williams, a pro- ducer on The Drew Carey Show, is lousy at character but efficient enough at cranking out sitcom gags and lines in pretty hit-and- miss fashion. Becky, for example, belongs to the Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club. Hmm. Congregational women pack heat, so do Baptist women, and Southern Baptist women. But Lutherans? Anyone who's spent five minutes in Minnesota knows Lutheran women must be among the least- likely gun-owning demographics in Ameri- ca. So the line has a false tinkle: it's a generic rube crack made by showbiz smart- asses who can't even be bothered figuring out which bunch of losers they're sneering at.
At other moments, Miss Williams is more surefooted. For her 'talent demon- stration', Becky sings the old Frankie Valli hit 'Can't Take My Eyes Off You' to a life- size model of Jesus. If Denise Richards's rendition doesn't quite transport the scene to 'Springtime For Hitler' heights (or depths), it's because of Jann's heavy-hand- ed direction. He's a numbingly literal direc- tor and he doesn't seem to know what to do with a joke except illustrate it. That said, much of Miss Williams's script would tax the best director.
The plot of Drop Dead Gorgeous hinges on a series of murders and attempted mur- ders committed by someone who's taking Miss Teen Princess America way too seri- ously. So Amber's alcoholic trailer-trash mom Annette (Ellen Barkin) gets burned in a mysterious fire in mid-chug, as a result of which her Miller beer can is permanent- ly fused into the flesh of her hand. This would be an excellent image in a novel by Tom Sharpe or Carl Hiassen, but somehow the minute you actually show it the joke dies: it's a funny thought, not a funny sight. And Jann keeps showing it to us, until finally the hand gets amputated and, in our final glimpse of her, the still alcoholic Annette is opening her beer with a hook.
Most of the characters are like that: a grisly combination of the stereotypical and contemptible that the actors struggle to rise above. Ellen Barkin succeeds: you feel she genuinely wants her daughter Amber to escape from the trailer park. Kirsten Dunst as Amber acquits herself well, too. So does Denise Richards as Becky, whose sense of entitlement is almost palpable and is, in fact, the hard, frozen-hearted bitch's only surviving human quality in a repertoire of shameless, plastic pandering. But much of the rest of the cast has a difficult job trying to conjure anything real out of Miss Williams's one-trait cartoons. And Kirstie Alley (formerly of Cheers) in particular gives a shrill, crude `Yah, you betcha' per- formance.
If you want a film about a beauty pageant, get Smile from the Seventies. Drop Dead Gorgeous seems less of a parody of Minnesota beauty competitions than a parody of Hollywood ignorance about the market they're supposed to be serving.
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