Strangers with Candy

Even though I was a fan of the Comedy Central TV series that it's based on, I did not have the highest expectations for this film. Maybe thinking of the many so-so adaptations of movies based on Saturday Night Live sketches and the like, I would have been satisfied with a few laughs. Instead, I found this to be a brilliant, hilarious, almost perfect rendition of the uniquely bizarre, radically Un-PC series. Perhaps it was because they virtually transplanted the entire cast of writers and actors from the series to the big screen, nothing was lost. Amy Sedaris plays Jerri Blank, the freaky middle-aged bisexual drug addict who, just out of prison, tries to fit in at high school and at home with her equally bizarre family. Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello reprise their roles as, respectively, the science and art teacher who are having a secret affair. This is made more amusing by the fact that Noblet (Colbert) is a fundamentalist who teaches that evolution is a fraud. At home, Jerri has a father who is in a coma (in the TV series, the father was a literal dummy; here he is played by an actor), a stepmother and stepbrother who despise her, and the stepmother's always-present "meat man" boyfriend who only wants to watch TV. The film actually has a fairly conventional plot involving a science fair competition, which reigns in the weirdness to some extent.

Strangers With Candy is not for everyone; in particular, it's not for the politically or culturally sensitive. The black principal at Jerry's high school, who has a gambling problem, is actually named Onyx Blackman; there are a constant stream of jokes at the expense of various ethnic types and homosexuals. Jerri has a confederate flag hanging in her bedroom, a detail that is not even spoken of. Sedaris does her utmost to make her alter ego Jerri as unattractive, stupid and, in many ways even repulsive as possible. Viewers are alternately tempted to laugh at her, feel sorry for her and simply shake their heads at her utter cluelessness. This, along with the rest of the uniformly weird characters makes for a kind of comedy that is both slapstick and absurd and at the same time hard-edged. It lacks the soft, sentimental core of mainstream comedies. You realize that these people are truly &%$#ed-up beyond repair and they are never going to change. This is, I suppose, sad, but it is also funny and, in its own way, more honest than most of what Hollywood dishes out.

Strangers With Candy is a thorough send-up of conventionality, moralistic cliches and the self-righteous hypocrisy of many authority figures. I suppose, along with shows like The Simpsons and South Park, it could be called cynical, even nihilistic in its portrayal of everyone as selfish and corrupt. But the complete absurdity of it all, which borders on the surreal, prevents us from taking its amorality any more seriously than we can take the pseudo-morality of its dysfunctional parents, teachers and school administrators. I found it to be the funniest movie I've seen in a long time.

I never really watched the TV series, but my wife enjoyed it. I watched this movie with her and I must admit, it was hard not to laugh. The film did seem to cool down a bit in the secand half,but it was pretty funny overall.

Out of prison & unleashed on Flatpoint once again, for the first time. A prequel to the best politically incorrect TV comedy perhaps ever (at least besides All In the Family). Laughs galore as Jerri tries to adjust to life outside the harsh penal system. It is not easy, especially for everyone inside Jerri's "chow zone". You may take a beating or perhaps loose a finger, but Jerri is loyal to her bitches. If anyone messes with her friends, she'll stick 'em with a shive in the showers. Violent slapstick, vulgar sexual content and other delights await.

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