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Candy strange, but not good enough |
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Written by Knight Ridder
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Wednesday, 12 July 2006 |
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 ‘Strangers With Candy’
[2 out of 4 stars]
Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello
R / 1 hr. 27 mins.
It’s back to school for Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris, twisted sister of humorist David), who resurrects her late Comedy Central show (1999-2001) of the same name in “Strangers With Candy.”
The central joke in the sporadically amusing parody of ’70s “AfterSchool Specials” — 20 minutes of good material stretched to feature length — is that it takes place during school hours. The film weds the shapeless ramble of a Rodney Dangerfield monologue with the outcasts-are-in assumption of a John Waters movie.
Jerri, 47, a self-described user, boozer and loser with the comic overbite and posterior overhang of an R. Crumb figure, reflects on a misspent life where her happiest memories are of women’s prison.
Newly paroled, Jerri returns home to find her mother dead and her father in a coma, and decrees to turn her life around.
If her bad-attitude teen years sent her father over the edge, Jerri reasons, maybe being a model adolescent will bring him back. So she re-enrolls at the local high school where the science prof is Stephen Colbert (who cowrote) and the art dude is Paul Dinello (who cowrote and directed). School board members are Allison Janney and Philip Seymour Hoffman.
Jerri has changed, but high school hasn’t. There are cheerleaders and jocks on one side, nerds and geeks on the other, and the perenially undeclared Jerri at the center.
I liked this movie better when it was called “Rock’n’Roll High School” and starred the Ramones and Mary Woronov. | Only registered users can write comments.
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