Drop Dead Gorgeous: A Subtle (and as subtle as a) Trainwreck.

Cafe Society
1

I watched Drop Dead Gorgeous again last night and oddly enough, I’ve placed (albeit low) in my top thirty or so movies. It is a bizzare and captivating film that I don’t think most people understand fully.

The supporting cast fully grab hold of their roles, lending some of the bizzarely emotional moments poignancy. Alley in particular gave a nice performance.

Dunst took her role seriously, she had to in my opinion, as I’ll discuss later. Denise Richards gave one of the more interesting performances, as I believe that she knows she is a poor actress, and thus constantly engages in the parody of her characters. I’ll report back on that after I watch Starship Troopers, but at least in this film, she doesn;t take the role seriously unless necessary. For instance, at the gun club: “Yeah, mom gave me this 9 mil for my thirteenth birthday. Inside the box she wrote ‘Jesus luuuvs winners.’”

She’s obviously hamming it up for fun, but she really plays the bitch parts of her character well.
The captivating part of the film is how it switches between over the top parody of the subject matter and the audience, and really emotional scenes with Dunst, like her arrival at the destroyed trailer. Whether or not this narrative structure is intentional, based on Jann’s experience, I’m not sure. But the whole movie is a trainwreck that you can’t avert your eyes from. Everything shoots to shit, but then Amber comes out on top. We are rooting for Amber until the surreal final montage, when the rug is pulled out from under the audience.

In the final scenes (and this is the important part that most people missed, I believe, contributing to the bad reviews) it is revealed that Amber really killed all of those people. Not the ones that Alley’s character killed, but Denise Richards and the newswoman. She also poisoned the food.

As for the rest of the film, I think that the over the top stereotypes were for the parody of the subject matter (pageants and small town America) and the biases of the audience. The audience laughs at the bumpkins and the self absorbed beauty queens and the Asians and the really klutzy contestant without realizing how really sad they are. The only sympathetic characters in the film (excepting Amber, for obvious reasons) are the ones we laugh at; the Asian daughter, the klutzy girl, the anorexic and Brittany Murphy’s character.

The astute viewer realizes at the end that Amber was really no different than Denise Richard’s character, or Kirstie Alley’s. The only sympathetic characters are the losers, still stuck in the small town that provided us with such amusement.

I like it, anyway.

2

I believe you, Ilsa, mostly because I’m notoriously oblivious about movies. (Remember how some people couldn’t tell Merry and Pippin apart on their first viewing of Fellowship of the Ring? I couldn’t tell Aragorn and Boromir apart.) But where in DDG do you see the evidence that Amber orchestrated those accidents? Are we just to assume it from her phenomenal streak of luck, or is it textual?

3

Well, the film kinda smacks you over the head with it (IMO) after the news reporter get shot; when you can clearly see Kirstie Alley aiming somewhere else. Also, in Amber’s reaction to Sara Rose being closed, I at least got the impression that it was a “I killed all those people for no reason” moment. I think it’s implied by the “winning streak.” After all, Jesus loves winners.

4

I liked the movie mostly. It was funny and entertaining. The biggest problem was that it didn’t quite toe the line between reality/surrealty, parody/believibilty as some. The master of the mockumentary is Christopher Guest. Spinal tap and Best in show were great,(Havn’t seen a Mighty Wind yet, but I want to). DDG just wasn’t quite as skillfully crafted as his work, and as you said lacked in subtlety which distracted and annoyed a bit.
I guess I’m just not as sure that the over-the-top aspect was well calculated that and that intentionally done, To me it came off as a poor attempt be noticed and to impact by shocking.

5

I disagree, and cannot see how you possibly arrived at this conclusion. It is pretty much worked out that it is all accidents, and fits in with everything else that happens in the movie. Amber was depressed after the food poisoning because her one chance of escape and living her dream of becoming a reporter was ruined.

I don’t think the anorexic character was supposed to be sympathetic, either. She was just another vapid pagenthead.

6

I gotta line up with Tars here, Ilsa. I can’t for the life of me figure out how you got that. I own this movie, and Mr. singular and I have watched it dozens of times, and there’s no way your conclusions can be backed up. Amber was devastated that Sara Rose was killed because she believed she could win. And the aiming thing is a reach at best - that’s a pretty sloppy montage of film that shows here wildly shooting into the crowd. She’s aiming somewhere else to get her next victim. And how could she kill Denise Richards? Force her Dad to buy a cheap float from Mexico? Sorry, these theories don’t float. Just enjoy the film for what it is.

7

Well, Amber was “all shookup” because she had to fake it. The first time I ever watched the film, my immediate reaction was that Amber had killed them. How hard is it to gas a pageant float? How about Denise Richards funeral? Amber fakes crying until her coronation, and then Loretta says “how about a root beer float?” Then she’s just fine.

Of course she is devastated that Sara Rose is closed. She knew she would win, somehow. She was sick because she killed 'em all for no reason. [/Tex Panthollow]

As for Guest, the point of his films are parodies of the subject matter. I think this film is a parody of everything.

If you don’t look ath the film from this perspective, it becomes kinda lame. As I see it, it is pretty interesting. To each his own.

8

Yes, I realize I spelled ‘bizarrely’ wrong. Twice.

9

The float explodes because her father cheaped out and bought one from Mexico. You’re barking up the wrong tree here.

10

That happened to be filled with gas?

Not to mention, how can my interpretation be wrong?

11

**
The cheap motor running the float was leaking gas. Please explain why someone would gas a float then not set it on fire (since she wasn’t near the float when it burned up)

Again, no, she is sad because she lost her escape from the town she lives in. And as her character is different from the hordes of pagentheads running around tearing the place apart, she doesn’t join them.

If you interpet something the way the makers aren’t intending it to be, then it is wrong, no matter how “novel” your interpetation is.

12

My interpretation of The Graduate:
Ben, A young man just out of college tries to come to terms with his homosexuality in the pre-Stonewall 1960s. Given the social mores of the time, the only way he can get near the object of his affection, Mr. Robinson, is to pretend to be interested in Mr. Robinson’s female family members. Unfortunately, Ben finds that the only way he can successfully continue the ruse is to actually make good occasionally on his implied promises of sexual affection. We see the clearest evidence of Ben’s homosexuality at the very end, when he and Elaine are on the bus, and he does not kiss her.

My interpretation of Back To School:
Thornton Melon, a rage-filled misogynist, cleverly uses his background in tailoring and his entrepreneurial skills to create an empire of stores catering to the “Big and Fat” man. By removing one of the biggest disincentives to being overweight–the difficulty in finding attractive clothing in larger sizes–he encourages men to get fat and then squish their female sexual partners. Having conquered the business world, be sets out to topple the ivory tower. He buys his way into a slot as a freshman at a nearby university. He sets his sights on a domineering female professor, hoping to destroy her credibility, attacking both her scholarship and her professionalism. He succeeds mightily on both counts, proving once and for all that the least educated male is the intellectual superior to even the most well-trained female mind, and that in the end, all a woman really wants is a man.

13

The biggest break for Amber in the movie was when the TV reporter was shot and Amber picked up her mike and took over. Since she was standing so close, she obviously couldn’t have shot the reporter, ditched the mike, etc. and got away with it.

There are just too many cases where Amber was obviously unaware of something bad that had happen. E.g., when the boy was shot, she didn’t know until she saw his body at the funeral home.

Amber is a naive character. Hardly evil. But my heart still belongs to Loretta.

14

It is a movie. I think she’s evil. It’s a lot more fun then.