July 22, 1999
Web posted at: 11:43 a.m. EDT (1543 GMT)

By Reviewer Paul Clinton

(CNN) -- The new film "Drop Dead Gorgeous," a mock documentary about a fictional beauty contest in Mount Rose, Minnesota, is the type of project that must have looked like a laugh riot on paper.

The premise of this black comedy: a documentary film crew has shown up in the little Minnesota town of Mount Rose to record the local beauty pageant, whose winner will go on to compete in the state championship, and could go from there to the Sarah Rose Miss Teen Princess America Pageant! Be still my heart.

Unfortunately this celebration of civic pride turns to murder, as the entire town threatens to go up in flames.

This film boasts a top-flight cast in stars Kirstie Alley, Ellen Barkin, Kirsten Dunst and Denise Richards. The concept is hilarious, and there are some wonderful situations and dialogue. But overall, it just doesn't quite work.

Alley adds an edge to her angst-ridden comedic style to great effect here, playing Gladys Leeman, the richest woman in town. She's a pageant mom from hell who won the crown in the 1970s and is now determined that her spoiled daughter Becky, played in a one-dimensional style by Richards, will get that tiara too -- you betcha.

Little Miss Becky's main competition is the goody-two-shoes Amber Atkins -- a Diane Sawyer wanna-be played winningly by Dunst, who is turning into one fine actress. Amber, who has ambition to spare, practices her tap dancing talent for the contest while applying make-up to dead bodies at the local funeral parlor.

She and her mother Annette, played wonderfully by Barkin, live on the wrong side of town in a trailer park. But this young girl has big plans -- you betcha -- and she, too, is determined to grab that crown and win a one-way ticket out of Mount Rose and into the glamorus world of television journalism.

As Amber says in the film, "Guys get outta Mount Rose all the time for hockey scholarships -- and prison. But the pageant's kinda my only chance."

As the contest gets closer and closer, the body count in town mysteriously grows higher and higher, and anyone involved in the pageant could be next.

This basic premise was covered, and covered well, by the 1993 cable TV black comedy "The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom," starring Holly Hunter.

Now, this small-budget feature film wants to achieve both the realism of a documentary and the wickedness of a dark comedy while poking fun at teen-age beauty pageants. Good choice -- there is no doubt that beauty pageants are always ripe for parody.

And screenwriter and executive producer Lona Williams should have the upper hand in crafting the "Drop Dead" script, as she knows this world from first-hand experience. She's from a small town in Minnesota and participated in the Junior Miss Pageant there.

Up to now, she's written mainly for television, where she was an executive producer for "The Drew Carey Show." Unfortunately, you can see most of her jokes and situations coming from a mile away.

Ultimately, "Drop Dead Gorgeous" is neither real enough, nor dark enough to fully realize its twisted potential. Acting in a mock documentary, as if you're not acting, but in fact of course you are acting, is very tricky. The four very talented actresses featured in this imperfect film manage to pull it off, but only for part of the time, causing an unevenness that is jarring.

First-time feature film director Michael Patrick Jann shows promise, but his major credits up to now are a Sprite commercial and an MTV comedy series. He really needs more experience to pull off this type of movie. It would have been very interesting to see this film in the hands of someone like Robert Altman.

Overall, the performances are fairly even and the Minnesota accents are -- for the most part -- dead on. This script occasionally provides wonderful moments and some genuine laughs, but the sum of its parts does not a great movie make.

Rated PG-13 for irreverent and crude humor, sex-related material and language. 98 minutes.

"Drop Dead Gorgeous" is a production of CNN Interactive sister company New Line Cinema, a Time-Warner property.