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Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999) Certificate 15

Drop Dead Gorgeous
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Rated 3.0 stars
Average rating
(60%)
 
Starring: Denise Richards | Kirstie Alley | Ellen Barkin | Kirsten Dunst
Director: Michael Patrick Jann
Studio: ICON HOME ENTERTAINMENT
Run time: 94 mins
Genres: Comedy
Languages: English
Hearing-impaired: English
Released: March 13, 2000

There can be only one Miss Teen Princess and an overbearing mother will stop at nothing to make sure her daughter wins a beauty contest. A twisted comedy set in a small Minnesota town loaded with some very unladylike behavior. Watch out for the affected Midwestern accents!

Rating of 3 stars out of 5
Radio Times

This highly sophisticated black comedy takes the form of a pseudo-documentary as it follows a small-town beauty pageant from the auditions to the glitz and glamour of the finals. Kirsten Dunst, a sweet girl from a trailer-trash background, is pitted against spoilt little rich girl Denise Richards. Meanwhile, someone in town is knocking off their competition. Ellen Barkin and Kirstie Alley are both excellent as the girls' cat-fighting mothers, and overall this is a very refreshing and ironic take on suburban American life. Director Michael Patrick Jann has succeeded in making an accessible and intelligent independent film in the same vein as Fargo, and the result is so much more interesting than the usual Hollywood fare.

Highest rated reviews

21 out of 33 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 5.0 stars
superb..................

williamsgwynfa from , 17th October, 2007

this dvd is superb. This is a documentary spoof style film, about a teenage beauty pageant. It centres around what is supposed to be the oldest such pageant in existence, the Mount Rose American Teen Pageant in Minnesota. There are superb performances from Kirsten Dunst, as the pretty, but poor, girl who would be Queen, Ellen Barkin, as her trailer trash mum, Allison Janney, as their supportive and endearing neighbour, and last, but certainly not least, Kirstie Alley, with a priceless Minnesota type accent, who is nothing short of fabulous as the rich, manical, beauty pageant director who will stop at nothing to see her daughter, effectively played by Denise Richards, win the pageant. well worth watching.

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14 out of 15 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 5.0 stars
Sick..Sick...Sick...but FUNNY !!

Andrew from Scotland, 18th May, 2004

A lot of people don't find this as funny as I do. It just seems to smack my funny bone full on. The humour is mignight black with jokes about anorexia, trailer park trash and perverts all included. The cast are a famous bunch and give it their all, look out for Alison Janney who is almost unrecognisable from her role in the West Wing. Not for the sensitive.

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8 out of 8 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 5.0 stars
totally surprising!

posyflump from london, 3rd December, 2003

Me and my husband sat down to watch this - him with that "Oh god its a chick flick" look on his face - and then we both laughed our heads off. Not your average chick flick by far and one of the best black comedy laughs we have had this year. Recommended.

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6 out of 6 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 3.0 stars
A good laugh at middle america

pinkie from london, 8th September, 2004

Okay, the plot may be a bit clunky at times, but this is a good, dark dig at all those things that terrify us about modern America heartland: christian fundamentalism (some great gags), American nationalism and that wholesome apple pie-ness that we smug Brits all love to hate.

Heck - this is just a funny film with some great one-liners and it's not the girly film you might think it is at all.

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Most recent reviews

Rated 0.0 stars
Aweful

A Customer from Oxford, 26th February, 2009

I actually fell asleep watching this film. It's absolutely aweful and completely BORING! If your looking for a laugh, or want a film like Miss Congeniality, then do NOT rent this film! It's a complete waste of time!

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1 out of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 5.0 stars
Who says American satire is dead?

A Customer from Folkestone, 10th February, 2009

This is a seriously funny film, deeply subversive and a great piece of work. What it's not is a satire on the vacuousness of beauty pageants. DDG aims at the emptiness of our whole materialistic culture and the way we have traded in the more valuable things in life for the pursuit of a perfect self image and will even cash in that perverted, limited objective for a few minutes of fame on TV. Life is a house of cards with hidden truths under every shiny surface. The humour is so dense and the jokes are so profligately thrown around that it occasionally feels like an incarnation of The Simpsons,. Surprise, surprise. 54 Simpsons episodes benefited from the efforts of DDG scriptwriter Lona Williams. She may have written your favourite. Every you time you watch you get something new, enabling you to rejoice further in the fact that half the people who watch it don't get any of it at all. In fact it's so sharp that even people who like this type of thing can get cut to pieces by it. Watch your fingers . . . Funniest American film since The Producers. Yes, it's THAT good.

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1 out of 1 people found the following review helpful:

Rated 5.0 stars
Blacker than black!!!!

Karen931 from , 18th August, 2008

This is just brilliant from start to finish! This black comedy centres around the trailer trash world of Beauty Competions, and the frankly brilliant cast includes pushy mothers, spoilt little rich girls and the right amount of murder and mystery to keep you intreaged.

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