Drop Dead Gorgeous (film)
   HOME

TheInfoList



OR:

''Drop Dead Gorgeous'' is a 1999 American
satirical Satire is a genre of the visual, literary, and performing arts, usually in the form of fiction and less frequently non-fiction, in which vices, follies, abuses, and shortcomings are held up to ridicule, often with the intent of shaming or e ...
mockumentary A mockumentary (a blend of ''mock'' and ''documentary''), fake documentary or docu-comedy is a type of film or television show depicting fictional events but presented as a documentary. These productions are often used to analyze or comment on c ...
black comedy film A comedy film is a category of film which emphasizes humor. These films are designed to make the audience laugh through amusement. Films in this style traditionally have a happy ending (black comedy being an exception). Comedy is one of the old ...
about a small town
beauty pageant A beauty pageant is a competition that has traditionally focused on judging and ranking the physical attributes of the contestants. Pageants have now evolved to include inner beauty, with criteria covering judging of personality, intelligence, ...
, directed by
Michael Patrick Jann Michael Patrick Jann (born May 15, 1970, Albany, New York) is an American actor, writer, and director best known as a cast member on MTV's ''The State''. Career Jann attended New York University, where, as a freshman, he joined the then-new com ...
, and starring
Kirsten Dunst Kirsten Caroline Dunst (; born April 30, 1982) is an American actress. She made her acting debut in the short ''Oedipus Wrecks'' directed by Woody Allen in the anthology film '' New York Stories'' (1989). She then gained recognition for her ro ...
, Ellen Barkin,
Brittany Murphy Brittany Anne Murphy-Monjack (; November 10, 1977 – December 20, 2009) was an American actress and singer. Born in Atlanta, Murphy moved to Los Angeles as a teenager and pursued a career in acting. Her breakthrough role was as Tai Fras ...
,
Allison Janney Allison Brooks Janney (born November 19, 1959) is an American actress. In a career spanning three decades, she is known for her performances across multiple genres of screen and stage. Janney has received various accolades, including an Academ ...
,
Denise Richards Denise Richards (born February 17, 1971) is an American actress, television personality, and former fashion model. Her most recognized roles are Carmen Ibanez in ''Starship Troopers'' (1997), Kelly Van Ryan in '' Wild Things'' (1998) and Bond gi ...
, Kirstie Alley, and
Amy Adams Amy Lou Adams (born August 20, 1974) is an American actress. Known for both her comedic and dramatic roles, she has been featured three times in annual rankings of the world's highest-paid actresses. She has received various accolades, incl ...
in her film debut. The satirical dynamics of a
Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
town unfold as multiple contestants in the regional American Teen Princess Pageant begin to die suspiciously. The film has gained new fans with time and is now regarded as a
cult film A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage ...
.


Plot

In 1995, Mount Rose,
Minnesota Minnesota () is a state in the upper midwestern region of the United States. It is the 12th largest U.S. state in area and the 22nd most populous, with over 5.75 million residents. Minnesota is home to western prairies, now given over to ...
is preparing for the annual Sarah Rose Cosmetics Mount Rose American Teen Princess Pageant
beauty pageant A beauty pageant is a competition that has traditionally focused on judging and ranking the physical attributes of the contestants. Pageants have now evolved to include inner beauty, with criteria covering judging of personality, intelligence, ...
. Ambitious Amber Atkins, an optimist, signs up to follow in the footsteps of her idol
Diane Sawyer Lila Diane Sawyer (; born December 22, 1945) is an American television broadcast journalist known for anchoring major programs on two networks including ''ABC World News Tonight'', ''Good Morning America'', ''20/20'', and ''Primetime'' newsmagaz ...
. Her mother, Annette is a former contestant. Amber works after school in the mortuary, applying makeup to corpses. They live in a small trailer near their friend Loretta. Fellow contestant Rebecca ("Becky") Leeman is the daughter of the richest man in town. His wife, Gladys Leeman is the head of the pageant organizing committee and former winner. Business connections between their furniture store and the pageant judges cause many to fear the contest will be rigged. In the days leading up to the pageant, many odd events occur around town, including contestant Tammy Curry (president of the gun club), who is killed when her tractor explodes; and then the death of a boy Becky liked, but interested in Amber, ruled a hunting accident. Amber decides to pull out after receiving a threatening note and her mother is injured in an explosion at their mobile home, but reconsiders to make her mother proud. At the dress rehearsal, fellow contestant Jenelle Betz swaps numbers with Amber. Midway through Jenelle's rehearsal performance, a stage light knocks her unconscious and renders her
deaf Deafness has varying definitions in cultural and medical contexts. In medical contexts, the meaning of deafness is hearing loss that precludes a person from understanding spoken language, an Audiology, audiological condition. In this context it ...
. Luckily, Jenelle knows
American sign language American Sign Language (ASL) is a natural language that serves as the predominant sign language of Deaf communities in the United States of America and most of Anglophone Canadians, Anglophone Canada. ASL is a complete and organized visual lang ...
so she claims that despite dropping out of the pageant, she has never been happier. At the pageant, Amber's dance costume disappears. She blames Becky and they have a catfight. Pageant choreographer Chloris Klinghagen gives Amber a new costume, however Iris and Gladys say she can't perform as the new costume was not approved weeks ago. When Lisa finds Amber crying, she drops out to give her approved costume. Amber gets a standing ovation for her
tap dance Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sounds of tap shoes striking the floor as a form of percussion. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm (jazz) tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses on dance; it is widely perfo ...
number. Becky sings a cringe-worthy song, dancing with a life-size Jesus doll on a crucifix, both amusing and horrifying the audience. The winners are announced, cheerleader Leslie Miller is second runner-up, Amber is first runner-up, with Becky winning. During Becky's victory parade the next day, she is killed in a freak accident when her elaborate swan float (her father had it made in
Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
, to save money) bursts into flames and explodes. A grief-stricken Gladys flies into a blind rage, admitting to being responsible for all the shenanigans, and is immediately arrested. Amber becomes the new pageant winner. At the state competition, Amber wins the Minnesota title by default after the other contestants get food poisoning, receiving an all-expenses-paid trip to the national pageant. Upon arrival, Amber and the other state winners are devastated to find that the cosmetics company was shut down for
tax evasion Tax evasion is an illegal attempt to defeat the imposition of taxes by individuals, corporations, trusts, and others. Tax evasion often entails the deliberate misrepresentation of the taxpayer's affairs to the tax authorities to reduce the tax ...
. This sends all the contestants except Amber on a rampage, vandalizing the property. A few years later, Gladys escapes from prison and is sniping from the top of the Mount Rose supermarket, declaring her intent to take revenge on Amber. During the six-hour police standoff, a television reporter at the scene is hit by a stray bullet. Amber quickly picks up the microphone, taking over reporting the story, impressing the news station with her poise and confidence. Amber becomes co-anchor of the evening news for Minneapolis–St. Paul WAZB-TV, thus fulfilling her dream of possibly becoming the next Diane Sawyer.


Cast


Background

The movie is set in the fictional town of Mount Rose, Minnesota. The town is based on Rosemount, where the writer, Lona Williams, grew up. The film was originally titled "Dairy Queens" but was changed for legal reasons. The characters in the movie all sport exaggerated, over the top parodies of
Minnesota accent North-Central American English (in the United States, also known as the Upper Midwestern or North-Central dialect and stereotypically recognized as a Minnesota accent or Wisconsin accent) is an American English dialect native to the Upper Midwest ...
s. The film was shot throughout the
Carver County Carver County is a county in the U.S. state of Minnesota. The county is mostly farmland and wilderness with many unincorporated townships. As of the 2020 census, the population was 106,922. Its county seat is Chaska. Carver County is named for ...
area, mainly in
Waconia, Minnesota Waconia ( ) is a city in Carver County, Minnesota, United States. Waconia attracts visitors to nearby Lake Waconia, a lake locally renowned for its fishing and recreation opportunities. The city's population was 13,033 at the 2020 census. Ge ...
, although names of real Minnesota communities were shown on the sashes of contestants later in the movie. News reporter
Diane Sawyer Lila Diane Sawyer (; born December 22, 1945) is an American television broadcast journalist known for anchoring major programs on two networks including ''ABC World News Tonight'', ''Good Morning America'', ''20/20'', and ''Primetime'' newsmagaz ...
is mentioned throughout the film as Kirsten Dunst's character Amber Atkins's
idol Idol or Idols may refer to: Religion and philosophy * Cult image, a neutral term for a man-made object that is worshipped or venerated for the deity, spirit or demon that it embodies or represents * Murti, a point of focus for devotion or medit ...
as Sawyer was a former beauty pageant winner. Amber's other idols include her beauty pageant mother who raised her alone in a trailer park and the previous year's winner who is hospitalized for
anorexia Anorexia nervosa, often referred to simply as anorexia, is an eating disorder characterized by low weight, food restriction, body image disturbance, fear of gaining weight, and an overpowering desire to be thin. ''Anorexia'' is a term of Gre ...
. Competing in the beauty pageant for a scholarship is juxtaposed against the opportunities that boys have in leaving "Mount Rose" such as
hockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...
scholarships and
prison A prison, also known as a jail, gaol (dated, standard English, Australian, and historically in Canada), penitentiary (American English and Canadian English), detention center (or detention centre outside the US), correction center, correc ...
. Two
Melissa Manchester Melissa Manchester (born February 15, 1951) is an American singer, songwriter and actress. Since the 1970s, her songs have been carried by adult contemporary radio stations. She has also appeared on television, in films, and on stage. Early l ...
songs are featured in the film as songs used in the talent portion by contestants. Mary lip-syncs "Don't Cry Out Loud", while Jenelle sings and signs "Through the Eyes of Love".
Fanfare for the Common Man ''Fanfare for the Common Man'' is a musical work by the American composer Aaron Copland. It was written in 1942 for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra under conductor Eugene Goossens and was inspired in part by a speech made earlier that year ...
is played to introduce the parade for the rigged competition and the plight of Hank. "Are we on '' Cops'' again?" is used throughout the movie when the "mockumentary" film crew is spotted. Richard Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra", inspired by Friedrich Nietzsche, is played when the Minnesota state pageant is interrupted by the violent illness of the contestants who ate shellfish (all except Amber).


Reception

The film received mixed reviews.
Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
gives the film a score of 47% based on 74 reviews. The site's consensus states: "Its dark humor sometimes hits, but mostly misses the target."
Metacritic Metacritic is a website that review aggregator, aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted arithmetic mean, weighted average). M ...
gives the film a score of 28% based on reviews from 28 critics, indicating generally unfavorable reviews. Audiences surveyed by
CinemaScore CinemaScore is a market research firm based in Las Vegas. It surveys film audiences to rate their viewing experiences with letter grades, reports the results, and forecasts box office receipts based on the data. Background Ed Mintz founded Ci ...
gave the film a grade "C−" on scale of A to F. Many critics liked the modern interpretation of the pageant world although just as many people disliked the film as a whole. Allison Janney and Denise Richards in particular received praise for their performances from a number of critics. Dennis Harvey of ''
Variety Variety may refer to: Arts and entertainment Entertainment formats * Variety (radio) * Variety show, in theater and television Films * ''Variety'' (1925 film), a German silent film directed by Ewald Andre Dupont * ''Variety'' (1935 film), ...
'' called the film "a fitfully amusing satire that would have gained a lot of mileage from just a tad more subtlety." Harvey says the writing is not sophisticated enough to pull off the some of the jokes without being condescending. Otherwise he praises the pacing, the performances, and the clever visual casting.
Roger Ebert Roger Joseph Ebert (; June 18, 1942 – April 4, 2013) was an American film critic, film historian, journalist, screenwriter, and author. He was a film critic for the ''Chicago Sun-Times'' from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, Ebert beca ...
liked the idea of the film, but wrote that the script failed to translate into screenplay and is never quite funny enough, due to subtle miscalculations of production and performance. Jeff Vice of the
Deseret News The ''Deseret News'' () is the oldest continuously operating publication in the American west. Its multi-platform products feature journalism and commentary across the fields of politics, culture, family life, faith, sports, and entertainment. Th ...
criticized the film for being derivative, comparing it to the 1975 pageant comedy ''
Smile A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile. Among humans, a smile expresses ...
'', and also '' Fargo'' and the mockumentary '.
Entertainment Weekly ''Entertainment Weekly'' (sometimes abbreviated as ''EW'') is an American digital-only entertainment magazine based in New York City, published by Dotdash Meredith, that covers film, television, music, Broadway theatre, books, and popular cul ...
gave the film a D grade, and compared the film unfavorably to ''
Smile A smile is a facial expression formed primarily by flexing the muscles at the sides of the mouth. Some smiles include a contraction of the muscles at the corner of the eyes, an action known as a Duchenne smile. Among humans, a smile expresses ...
'', and ''
The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom ''The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom'' is a 1993 biographical black comedy television film produced by and for HBO. It was directed by Michael Ritchie and starred Holly Hunter, Swoosie Kurtz and Beau Br ...
''.


Cult status

The film has gained new fans with time and is regarded as a
cult film A cult film or cult movie, also commonly referred to as a cult classic, is a film that has acquired a cult following. Cult films are known for their dedicated, passionate fanbase which forms an elaborate subculture, members of which engage ...
. In 2011,
Allison Janney Allison Brooks Janney (born November 19, 1959) is an American actress. In a career spanning three decades, she is known for her performances across multiple genres of screen and stage. Janney has received various accolades, including an Academ ...
stated that she is approached by more fans of this film than for her Emmy-winning tenure on ''
The West Wing ''The West Wing'' is an American serial political drama television series created by Aaron Sorkin that was originally broadcast on NBC from September 22, 1999, to May 14, 2006. The series is set primarily in the West Wing of the White Hous ...
''. In July 2019, the movie was released for streaming for the first time on
Hulu Hulu () is an American subscription streaming service majority-owned by The Walt Disney Company, with Comcast's NBCUniversal holding a minority stake. It was launched on October 29, 2007 and it offers a library of films and television serie ...
, which was "met with a host of celebratory tweets, particularly among women and queer people, who have long recognized it as a cult classic", according to ''
The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publis ...
's'' Adam White. The 20th anniversary of the movie's release on July 23 attracted a slew of retrospective praise from the likes of ''The Independent'', ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', '' Teen Vogue'', ''
The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issues ...
'' and
E! News ''E! News'', previously known as ''E! News Daily'' and ''E! News Live'', is the infotainment, entertainment news operation for the cable network E! in the United States. Its former on-air weekday newscast debuted on September 1, 1991, and prima ...
. The ''New Yorker's'' Jia Tolentino credited the movie's "transformation" from a flop to a "venerated artifact of Y2K camp" to its slow discovery on VHS and DVD by teenage girls who identified with its truthfulness and particular brand of dark humor. Tolentino summed up the movie as "...offensive, for sure—completely awful, really, and possibly deadly. It is also irreplaceable, hilarious, surprisingly tender, and lavishly, magnificently absurd." ''The Guardian'' praised the film's "vicious indecency", describing it as "...trashy, wonderful, endlessly quotable, and...20 years ahead of its time." Adam White from ''The Independent'' praised the movie's radical departure from lighthearted teen movies of the late 1990s, stating that it "was made for a generation of freaks and outsiders, whose ambitions, oddities, queerness and poverty were otherwise ignored by anything similarly mainstream or funny." He added that it was "acidic and truthful about beauty, class and ambition, satirised all-American moralism and blew up Denise Richards, then fresh from '' Wild Things'', as she rode a giant paper-maché swan." Alex Zaragoza of ''Teen Vogue'' echoed other reviews in praising the movie's appeal to outsiders and misfits, and departing from the teen rom-com tropes of other movies released that year like '' 10 Things I Hate About You'' and ''
She's All That ''She's All That'' is a 1999 American teen romantic comedy film directed by Robert Iscove. It stars Freddie Prinze Jr., Rachael Leigh Cook, Matthew Lillard, and Paul Walker. After being dumped by his girlfriend, Zack Siler boasts he could ...
''. Zaragoza stated that the girls in ''Drop Dead Gorgeous'' "don't yearn to land their respective dream boy...they're too busy trying not to get clapped by a crazed mother-daughter duo... and striving to break out of the confines of their small town." He further described it as a "wild, absurdly portrayed story that's fundamentally about small-town struggles and overcoming the adversity of being born into a class that lacks opportunities to ultimately earn the life you've dreamed of for yourself. It's unabashed weirdness and mockumentary-style filmmaking made it an immediate cult classic..."


Soundtrack


References


External links

* * {{rotten-tomatoes, drop_dead_gorgeous 1990s black comedy films 1990s mockumentary films 1990s satirical films 1990s teen comedy films 1999 comedy films 1999 films 1999 directorial debut films American black comedy films American mockumentary films American satirical films American teen comedy films Films about murder Films about beauty pageants Films scored by Mark Mothersbaugh Films set in 1995 Films set in Minnesota Films shot in Minnesota New Line Cinema films 1990s English-language films 1990s American films