Drop Dead Gorgeous

Screenwriter Lona Williams -- a former Junior Miss first runner-up -- parlays her insider's knowledge of the beauty-pageant circuit into this scathing mockumentary about one Minnesota town's particularly cutthroat contest. What ensues, however, is more disastrous than a wedgie during the swimsuit competition.

A predictable clash of classes pits Kirsten Dunst as a perky trailer-trash tap-dancer against Denise Richards's ruthless rich bitch. Yet it's she of the Rasputin-like career -- Kirstie Alley -- as Richards's conniving, "you betcha"-spewing mother who inflicts the casting deathblow. In all, first-time director Michael Patrick Jann's satire about small-town hypocrisy and competitive overdrive is one woefully unfunny, bitterly self-loathing exercise in derivative filmmaking; everything from There's Something About Mary, Waiting for Guffman, and The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom gets plagiarized for the sake of bawdy bad taste and desperate camp. Williams, meanwhile, in denying her characters a shred of dignity, seems to have forgotten pageantry's most cherished trait: congeniality. At the Holiday and Showcase cinemas.
-- Alicia Potter