strangers with candy, the movie was f*cking awesome
i love madonna, but so do millions of other gay men. i worship martha stewart but i am certainly not the only one. i adore rachael ray but she has a tremendous following. i am absolutely obsessed with gael garcia bernal, but not as much as the average 14-year old mexican girl. i have seen every christopher guest movie a dozen times, but then again who hasn't? considering this, therefore, i do not hesitate to say that john and i are the world's biggest fans of amy sedaris and her dumbfoundingly awesome tv show "strangers with candy." we can practically recite every line of all three seasons of the show. we watch the dvds like non-stop. we have introduced our best friends to it. to us it is almost a religion. so when we heard sedaris was releasing the movie at sundance over a year ago we were almost beside ourselves in anticipation. of course we shouldn't have been so excited considering that it wouldn't find a distributor and be released for another year and a half. but our "strangers" hunger would eventually be sated. at the end of june the film had its debut. and this upcoming weekend it has its debut in tucson. john and i and our friend abeer have been anxiously awaiting this friday and the entertainment possibilities it foretells. so much so, in fact, that we couldn't possibly wait any longer. so, on sunday, john and i broke down and drove to scottsdale and finally saw it.

and it was fucking awesome.

so, if you don't know what it's about (i.e., if you have been shielded from the funniest, most entertaining, most unfortunately shortlived television program of all time) "strangers with candy" was this spoof of after school specials that ran on comedy central for three seasons. it was the brainchild of amy sedaris (sister of confusingly more famous david), stephen colbert and paul dinello. sedaris played jerri blank, a boozer, a user, and a looser who, at 46, gets out of prison and goes back to high school. she still makes all the wrong choices, but, this time around, she makes them for all the right reasons. the movie is a sort of prequel to the tv series, and shows how she came to be flatpoint highschool's most famous concrete donkey.

the movie definitely isn't as funny as the series, but that would be almost impossible. still, i give it a strong b+. like every other movie i have ever seen based on a tv show, this movie went wrong when it marched in the guest stars. special characters played by philip seymour hoffman, matthew broderick, allison janney and, (most notable in her sucktasticness) sarah jessica parker almost doom this movie from the beginning. sarah jessica parker's turn as the flatpoint high grief counselor is so intensely unfunny that it threatens the whole film. this is especially notable considering how hilarious jeaneane garofalo was as the original flatpoint grief counselor. the other three guest stars don't do much better.

the good thing is, that if you can look past these four awful characters, you can get to the heart of this film. and that heart is fucking hilarious. sedaris, colbert, dinello, greg hollimon and deborah rush are so funny. the unfunny characters can be easily ignored if the viewer is promised a taste of the gooey rich center that is the cast of the original series.

there is no plot to this movie. it is more like a series of sketches. my favorite is the skit in which the blank family is eating dinner. in one part jerri's step mother tells her not to speak with her mouth full. she responds by spitting the food out of her mouth all over the table. but there are dozens of hilarious moments throughout. as a matter of fact, i don't know if i have ever laughed so much in a movie theater in my life. i was laughing so much that i feel i missed half the movie. i dont think i can write a review until i see it a second time this friday when it comes to tucson.


"megawatti- - you thinking about signing up for the science fair?

jerri- - no, i was thining about pussy. science is for queers."  ¶ 7/19/2006 03:13:00 AM