Strangers With Candy - The Atlanta Journal-Constitution movie review

'Strangers With Candy' won't disappoint fans

By BOB TOWNSEND
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Even die-hard fans of "Strangers With Candy" are likely to acknowledge that the satirically unhinged material that made the Comedy Central series (1999-2000) a cult thing might be better suited to 20 minutes on the tube than an hour and a half on the big screen.

ThinkFilm

'Strangers With Candy'

The verdict: Amy Sedaris and Comedy Central cohorts mock high school with a classy cast and and an over-the-top, politically incorrect script.

Director: Paul Dinello
Starring: Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker
Run time: 87 minutes
Release date: June 28, 2006
Rating: R for sexual content, language and some drug material.
See showtimes

Meet Amy Sedaris
For the star of 'Strangers with Candy,' comedy comes naturally.

On the web
Official movie site
View the trailer
Trailers require Quicktime

But for those who never tuned in, the main attraction of this movie "prequel" will be Amy Sedaris (sister of humorist writer David Sedaris) gleefully reprising her rubber-faced role as 46-year-old, recently paroled Jerri Blank, a self described "boozer, user and loser."

Returning to high school 32 years later to essentially start over her misspent youth, Sedaris carries the movie into screaming spasms of dysfunction. Her Jerri is an in-your-face geek in the tradition of alt comedy caricatures created by the likes of Andy Kaufman and Chris Elliott (no surprise then that David Letterman's company produced the movie).

Her droopy drawers, swirling, sad eyes and toothy overbite are as much a part of her being as her polymorphously perverse appetites. And, despite her sharp tongue and wildly inappropriate outbursts, we sometimes feel for her plight.

Sticking close to the surreal conceit of the series, the script by Sedaris and original "Strangers" cohorts Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello (who's also the director) mocks the formula of those moralizing After School Specials of the '70s and early '80s. Except that Jerri, redoing her student days at suburban Flatpoint High, always seems to learn the wrong lesson.

Colbert plays closeted science teacher Chuck Noblet and Dinello is airhead art teacher (and Noblet's lover) Geoffrey Jellineck. But Greg Hollimon betters them both as bombastic principal and petty thief Onyx Blackman. The slim plot spins on Blackman's attempt to cover his crooked ways by having a team of his students win the science fair.

Predictably, most of the jokes are about jocks and nerds and sex and drugs. And then there's Jerri's ultimate absentee dad (Dan Hedaya), who lapsed into a coma on account of his daughter's bad behavior, but still gets propped up to join the family at the dinner table.

The classy cast includes Philip Seymour Hoffman and Allison Janney as prim and prying school board members; Matthew Broderick as a conniving science fair consultant; Sarah Jessica Parker as a guidance counselor so cynical she keeps a tip jar on her desk; and Ian Holm as the screwy family doctor.

Finally, though, whether you guffaw, giggle or sit stone-faced through "Strangers With Candy" will depend on your reaction to Sedaris as Jerri and her freak show of over-the-top bad taste.