With entirely too much attitude for average film viewers “Strangers With Candy” remains a flat-out funny show that never stops rockin’ until the fat lady sings. Although coming across too much like a made-for-TV special the fantastic prequel to the Comedy Central series turns out to be entertaining for those who don’t ask too much.
Amy Sedaris appears on screen as her own custom made character, Jerri Blank, in a roll that redefines over-the-top. An over-forty female who was too drugged up or traumatized to actually participate in her mid-life crisis, Blank embodies all of the sex, drugs and general “me” lifestyle of the ‘70s and ‘80s come to an almost burned out finish in the new millennium. Her insertion into the brutal milieu of the modern suburban high school provides plenty of fodder for in your face humor, which happens to be right up Sedaris’ alley. This setting was made for her writing and for her character.
Jerri Blank is a 47 year old just-released ex-con who wanders home after 32 years in and out of prison. When she ran away at age 15 the shock of her leaving put her father into a coma, so the story goes, and now she is bound and determined to bring him out of it. She thinks she can do this by re-entering high school and making good as a student, giving her father the pride he never knew when she was a teenage junkie destined for a life in the gutter.
By the end of the movie most of the social stereotypes found in and around most high schools, suburbs and prisons of the USA have been lined up and summarily insulted.
Cutting edge satire? Yes. Cynical? Oftentimes. Most people will laugh during this movie and most will forget it the minute they walk out the door.
While in high school Jerri meets the standard issue feckless moron science teacher, Chuck Noblet (co-writer Stephen Colbert) and his not so standard issue gay lover art teacher Geoffrey Jellineck (co-writer Paul Dinello).
The two act out a marginally funny gay romance that seems to work in the context of a high school better than, say, in the Village. The door is cracked on the inside lives of the stiffly personified high school staff. Noblet and Jellineck fall in and out of love while struggling through the political machinations of principal Onyx Blackman who is played in absolutely show-stealing action by Greg Hollimon.
Dan Hedaya plays the comatose daddy and somehow manages to be funny while motionless in bed. His eventual re-awakening is somewhat of a letdown but by that time we are ready for the whole darn farce to be over anyway.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is wasted as a school board official but his fans will love him none the less.
Matthew Broderick takes a brief shot at the role of the corrupt and self-serving Roger Beekman, the ringer science teacher brought on-board to thwart Jerri’s do-or-die science fair team.
Sarah Jessica Parker gets a brief but very juicy role as the high school grief counselor who spotlights how much modern high school staffs really do not care.
So if the downside is mindless TV-sized comedy with little beef, an over-used setting and an unfairly disadvantaged target in the form of the sold-out American school system, the good news is that the whole shebang is good for some laughs.
In the end that should be enough for most.
Opens: June 28, 2006 limited release in NYC MPAA: Rated R for sexual content, language and some drug material.
Your Talkback on this Story