Fresh and Exciting

This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

Amy Sedaris is hilarious and she is in top form in this hilarious movie which is a prequel to a show of the same name. It's a crime that she isn't all that well known and useless talents like Amy Schumer are. The basic premise is that a 40 something woman who also happens to be an ex junkie returns to high school. Shenanigans ensue and the cast is ably supported by both known and unknown faces.

'Strangers with Candy' based off the deliciously neurotic Comedy Central original series by the same name, is filled with such ingeniously funny moments. Too bad that's all they are -- moments. 'Strangers with Candy' had so much potential, but it just isn't consistently funny enough. 'Strangers with Candy' is a mixed bag in many respects.First off, Amy Sedaris is absolutely hysterical! Just her body language as the 40-year-old reformed drug addict who goes back to high school, is enough to make you roll on the floor laughing. The rest of the cast including the wide array of cameos from Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman to Sex and the City's Sarah Jessica Parker as the school's unsympathetic grief counselor who charges the students in tips, is decent to say the least. The real scene-stealer is Stephen Colbert as the closet-gay creationist science teacher who is just flat-out strange.The real problem with 'Strangers with Candy' lies in the screenplay. It has some incredibly funny moments like I've previously mentioned, but it has such long stretches of time where nothing funny happens. Calling 'Strangers with Candy' off-beat is like calling the bombing of Hiroshima violent, it's an understatement of gigantic proportions. If you are into that sort of off-beat comedy films, chances are you'll love 'Strangers with Candy.' But for someone like me expecting something with a bit more substance and guffaws, I was pretty damn disappointed. Grade: C+

I have to start off by saying I love Stephen Colbert. I enjoy everything he's has been a part of up to this disappointing film. I chose this film thinking it could be as funny or even close to as funny as what I expect from A-list comedians like Stephen Colbert. I was flabbergasted to find that this movie is uglier than the main character. From beginning to end I was only able to keep watching with hopes that Colbert would redeem the film in some way or another. Unfortunately this film should only be recommended to people suffering from erections lasting longer than 4 hours. 8 stars is something that should be reserved for films that I would at least watch more than once. I barely made it through this terrible, unfunny film and in my opinion it deserves what it got.

What remains remarkable in the translation from Comedy Central TV show to mainstream feature film is Amy Sedaris' complete lack of vanity in replaying her comic alter-ego, the aptly named Jerri Blank, a 47-year old ex-con who decides to return home after a lengthy prison term and finish high school. The original concept for the three-season cult series was a fun idea full of possibilities, satirizing the high-minded seriousness of the ABC Afternoon Specials in the 1970's by having the hapless Jerri learn some significant life lesson after going through some humiliating situation. Probably a disappointment to dedicated fans of the show, the 2006 movie is really no different except the paper-thin plot feels dragged out to its eighty-minute length (wisely cut from its 97-minute length in theaters). It has the additional burden of feeling repetitive of the series without providing much more in the way of texture or complexity.Director Paul Dinello (who plays effete art teacher Geoffrey Jellineck), along with co-writers Sedaris and Stephen Colbert (who plays closeted science teacher Chuck Noblet), uses the opportunity to fill in a bit of Jerri's back story in coming back to the family home and dealing with her father's comatose state. According to kindly Dr. Putney, the only cure lies with Jerri's efforts to do her father proud by winning the school science fair. Of course, the easily misdirected Jerri wants to be part of the in-crowd, in particular, getting horizontal with Brason, the school's hunky squat-and-thrust champion. This consequently means turning her back on her science project team, the Fig Neutrons, which includes Tammi, Jerri's best friend and object of Sapphic desire, and Megawatti, the Indonesian geek who has an unexplainable crush on Jerri. Lots of hijinks ensue until the inevitable conclusion, including the insertion of several star cameos - Allison Janney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as bickering school board members, Sarah Jessica Parker as self-absorbed grief counselor Peggy Callas, Ian Holm as Dr. Putney, Dan Hedaya as Jerri's comatose father; and Kristen Johnston as a wheelchair-bound coach. Matthew Broderick actually has a bigger role as Noblet's adversary, the preening Roger Beekman.Much of the TV series cast is here as well with Colbert the standout as the blustery, uptight Chuck who secretly yearns for Geoffrey, who spurns him to be Roger's idea man. For most of the time, it is fitfully funny if only because the scabrous screenplay takes no prisoners in its approach. Consider this the comic flipside to "Sherrybaby" with plenty of familiar elements from "Carrie" and "Napoleon Dynamite" thrown in for good measure. But most of all, it is a tribute to Sedaris' Borat-like transformative skills as a comic actress. The 2006 DVD has a commentary track by Sedaris, Colbert and Dinello, and although they are obviously having a good time together, much of that rapport surprisingly does not translate well for the viewer. There are eighteen minutes worth of deleted scenes, most understandably excised though interestingly, it looks like Parker's counselor was the chief victim of the cuts. Also included are the theatrical trailer (another case of a promising trailer that's a lot funnier than the movie itself) and a music video for Delano Grove's "Atomic Car".