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Review:
 Paul
Dinello must have the goods on lots of people, otherwise how the
heck could he have managed to get an all-star cast to do a movie
version of the “hit”TV show, “Strangers With Candy?”
Yeah, SWC has a fan-base. Not much of one, because it never got
good ratings even on Comedy central. I've never actually seen an
entire episode and I find Amy Sedaris' Jerri Blank to be one of
the most repulsive characters on cable TV. She's even worse on the
big screen.
For those who are mercifully ignorant of the premise of the show:
Jerri Blank(Sedaris), is fortysomething ex-con who has decided to
return to high school as a freshman, something all the kids are
cool with as they're too stupid to notice the crows-feet,
laugh-lines and other various wrinkles. Ug.
So, in this prequel, Jerri returns from the pokey to find that her
father Guy(Dan Hedaya) has been in a coma for 32 years, her mother
had died of grief sometime before, and while he was unconscious,
he had married again to a woman named Sara(Deborah Rush) and had a
kid(Joe Cross), who's now about sixteen and one of the school
bullies. This is explained by the random Dr. Putney(Sir Ian Holm),
who was sitting in the room watching over dad.
So Jerri comes up with a plan to do something good in order to
bring her dad back to life. So she goes back to high school, where
principal, Blackman(Greg Hollimon) has been told by the school
board (Allison Janney and Philip Seymour Hoffman), that if he
doesn't win the state science fair, which takes place in a week,
then they're taking the state funding back.
Makes sense? Didn't think so.
So instead of having the regular science teacher, Mr.
Noblet(Stephen Colbert) supervise, they've decided to have a
ringer(Matthew Broderick) take over and a…the thing's too damn
stupid to go on.
The jokes don't work for the most part, the wince/laugh ratio is
about eight winces to every laugh, and having real teenagers Chris
Pratt as the school jock, while Carlo Alban as Megawatti the
science geek just makes it even worse. You feel for these kids.
Yeah they may have gotten paid now, but this may come to haunt
them in years to come. Okay, so they're both almost thirty, but
it's still going to be one hell of an embarrassment.
Had not “Ultraviolet” come out in March, this would be the worst
movie of the year thus far.
Eric Lurio
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