Drop Dead Gorgeous

It started 15 years ago with This Is Spinal Tap, followed by Bob Roberts and the most recent Waiting For Guffman. The film genre labeled "satirical documentary" gives the audience the "you are there" perspective by following the protagonists who know they are being observed on camera.

Drop Dead Gorgeous combines the small town elements of "Guffman" with the dark humor of Fargo by looking at the behind-the-scenes folderol of that all-American icon known as the teenage beauty contest.

The movie is set in Mount Rose, Minnesota, population 5,076, "home of the world’s oldest living Lutheran." All of its denizens are portrayed as imbeciles, rubes and hicks. It’s a wonder anyone knew where to hang the town’s traffic light.

A local beauty contest is held to send the winner to the Miss American Teen Princess Pageant. Gladys Leeman (Kirstie Alley), a former beauty queen, is the host. She’s bound and determined to see that her daughter Becky (Denise Richards), wins the event. Becky performs a dance number with a crucifix figure, which goes over with the movie audience with a resounding thud.

Her closest rival is Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst). Amber’s "talent" is tap dancing, which she practices while working on dead bodies at her after-school job at the local funeral parlor. Her mother Annette (Ellen Barkin) is a trailer park cosmetologist. Injured in a mysterious explosion, we see Annette throughout the rest of the movie with a beer can fused to her hand.

Drop Dead Gorgeous starts out okay. About halfway through, the picture seems to lose direction by mocking the dimwitted participants in a mean spirited way. An anorexic beauty contestant and a mentally retarded man are just two of the many targets.

Perhaps a more appropriate subject would have been a satirical look at a motion picture production crew flopping in its attempt to make an entertaining movie documentary about beauty contests.