A lot of funny things probably go on backstage at any given beauty contest, but obviously writer Lona Williams never heard about any of them. Instead of offering any kind of juicy details -- we all knew about how contestants put Vaseline on their teeth to brighten their smiles, thank you -- her screenplay for "Drop Dead Gorgeous" merely trots out a bunch of cliched characters, saddles them with Minnesota acents and expects hilarity to follow.
With its conniving mothers and star-struck daughters, "Gorgeous" begs unflattering comparisons to two other similar and far superior films, both directed by Michael Ritchie. His outrageously funny "Smile" stands as the last word on teen pageants, while his "The Positively True Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom," a 1993 HBO movie starring Holly Hunter as the kook who went to prison for attempting to hire killers to ensure her kid made the cheerleading squad, had an edginess and spark that's nowhere to be found here.
Clumsily directed by Michael Patrick Jann, "Gorgeous" offers a mock-documentary look at what happens when girls from the opposite sides of the social scale compete for the title of Sarah Rose Cosmetics American Teen Princess. Rebecca Leeman (Denise Richards) is a well-to-do beauty whose dad owns a furniture store, while Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst) works afterschool as a beautician in a funeral home to help pay the bills. Rebecca's mom Gladys (a tired-looking Kirstie Alley) is snippy and snobbish; Amber's mom Annette (Ellen Barkin, in yet another role unworthy of her) is crude and boozy. Williams, from the evidence onscreen, never met a stereotype she couldn't embrace.
But it's not a crime to use stereotypes in a comedy if you can find something amusing for them to say, as David E. Kelley did in "Lake Placid." Williams, however, thinks we should be tickled just by the mere mention of cow-tipping, lutefisk and Melissa Manchester. At one point, fire sweeps through the Atkins' trailer and Amber reports all their clothes "melted together, forming a big polyester meteor in our closet." Poor people living in trailer parks and wearing polyester -- pretty witty stuff, this.
In some kind of attempt to top "There's Something About Mary," "Gorgeous" also includes a mentally challenged character who bumps into things and plays with himself in front of the contestants. It also makes several slaps at Lutherans, with an organization called the Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club and a joke about the Lutheran church being holier the Catholic church because "Lutherans use grape Kool-Aid for the blood of Christ." To show us how stupid and trashy people are in Minnesota, Williams has them chew tobacco, smoke incessantly and say "you betcha" as often as possible.
Lost in this mess are a couple of respectable performances by Richards and Dunst, the only people in the movie who seem to understand that playing comedy does not mean you have to shout frequently and exaggerate every gesture. Dunst, remembered as the creepy child from "Interview With the Vampire," has turned into a highly likable young actress, and Richards is spotlighted in one of the film's few funny scenes, a bizarre moment involving a Frankie Valli song and an effigy of Jesus Christ. Most of the rest of "Drop Dead Gorgeous" simply falls flat.
James Sanford
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