Strangers with Candy

Kind of like a best of album for the show, all the best routines and gags are here. If you can get your hands on the series watch it, unlike Reno 911 were the movie is an extension of (and better than) the series, this is the entire series condensed ...(read more)to an hour and half. Though there's a lot of recycled material there's a fair amount of new jokes as well. In any event its still one of the funniest comedies in recent memory. Amy Sedaris is brilliant, and Stephen Colbert is great to watch here as well. My only real complaint is the dance sequence in the credits is kinda simple(the dance sequences at the end of each episode used to be one of the best parts of the show). Sans that, this was great.

"Hello, I'm Jerri Blank and - and I'm an alcoholic. I'm also addicted to amphetamines as well as main line narcotics. Some people say I have a sex addiction, but I think all those years of prostitution was just a means to feed my ravenous hunger for heroin. It's kinda like the chicken or the nugget. The point is, I'm addicted to gambling. Thank you."

This was a pretty wacky movie - very unusual and unlike anything I've seen before.

This movie has fairly basic plot: a recently released 40+ year old lady wants to help bring her father out of a coma, so she embarks on the task of bettering herself by going back to high school and excelling. If it doesn't make sense, that's OK - it's nothing compared to the characters.

What makes this movie so unusual are the characters - the lead character (Amy Sedaris), the principal, the parents, etc. They are so strangely conceived and acted that it's really wild to watch. I guess that means that the actors and director did a pretty good job.

I can't say this movie was funny. Rather, it was amusing because of the extreme nature of characters. It was interesting to watch just to see what they were going to say next.

If you're in the mood for something really strange - check this out. You'll know after the first 10 minutes if this is something that's going to interest you.

Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) is a 46 year old awkward ex-con junkie prostitute. She is let out of prison and returns home to find her father in a coma with a younger wife (Deborah Rush). She decides to go back to school and take a different path so that her father can wake up from his coma. The school is filled with wacky teachers and mean girls led by Monica (Elisabeth Harnois). She's hot for Monica's boyfriend Brason (Chris Pratt). She takes Tammi Littlenut (Maria Thayer) under her chicken wing and befriends loser Megawatti Sucarnaputri. Teacher Chuck Noblet (Stephen Colbert) breaks up with Geoffrey Jellineck (Paul Dinello) and faces a challenge from Roger Beekman (Matthew Broderick) for the science fair.

This is a prequel to the cult TV show 5 years after it went off the air. It's ridiculous, insane and stupid. Amy Sedaris is gloriously ridiculous. The movie does wear thin after awhile. It extends the half-hour format a little too far but it's still a great watch for fans of the TV show.

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".

"Strangers with Candy" is basically a prequel to the television series. It tells the story of Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) the 46 year-old ex-junkie, ex-con who returns to high school to pick up right where she left off. During this she has to deal with her crazy science teacher Chuck Noblet (Stephen Colbert), the eccentric art teacher Geoffrey Jellineck (Paul Dinello) and Principal Blackman (Greg Holliman). On top of this she tries to fit which is hard to do but makes friends with Megawatti (Carlo Alban) & Tammi (Maria Thayer). Her friends and her enter a science fair and want to win so that Jerri's father (Dan Hedaya) can be proud and maybe awake from his coma.

Amy Sedaris is Jerri Blank. She play's the ex junkie/prostitute very well. I love the character in general because it's such a unique and weird character that hasn't been done before. My all time favorite character in the film and on the TV series is Geoffrey Jellineck played by Paul Dinello who is also the director of the film. The whole gay art teacher thing to me is very highly amusing and I love how upbeat his character is. It's without a doubt my favorite character on the show but isn't used enough in the movie. Also Stephen Colbert plays Chuck Noblet who is my second favorite character. What I like most about this character is that he is basically borderline insane and just yells and gets upset for no real reason. He also hides that he prefers men to woman even though he is married to a woman. Chuck is a very funny and interesting character. Moving on, it was good to see Greg Holliman back as Principal Blackman and Maria Thayer who plays Tammi Littlenut. Both where very essential characters to the original series and it was nice to see they brought them back for the film along with some of the other characters including Jerri's Mother (Deborah Rush), her mother's boyfriend Stew (David Pasquesi) and a few others.

However what I didn't like was the fact that they changed the dad and Orlando from the original series and in fact Orlando was left out completely. Instead we had Megawatti Sukharnabhoutri played by Carlo Alban who was like a cheap rip-off of Orlando. I didn't find this character very affective but it was OK. Also I would have to say they should have stuck with the original dad. I heard he wasn't an actor but Dan Hedaya didn't say really anything in this movie and didn't really act so I think they should have stuck with the original cast and if they couldn't get the original cast then leave the characters out. I would have rather of done without Orlando instead of dealing with some replacement with a different name but was pretty much the same character. Also the movie had a lot of special appearances by various celebrities including Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, Ian Holm, and Philip Seymour Hoffman however each character was a pretty pointless.

The same three people who wrote the script for the television series wrote the script for the film and those are the three main cast members Amy Sedaris, Paul Dinello, and Steven Colbert. What I didn't like about the script was the fact that it was basically a tame version of the television show. This was their chance to make these crazy characters do wacky things that they could never get away with on TV. As far as the TV series vs. the movie itself well the TV series is much more edgy, creative and bold. The script had too much of the original episodes written in and when it came to adding new content most of the new content didn't work like the whole science fair thing. That didn't really work for me. Or Matthew Broderick's character, he was a total waste of time. Don't get me wrong some of the script was good but as since it was a TV series first the writing on the series was a lot better and raw. The movie will most likely get an R rating so why not be bold and do things with the characters that Comedy Central won't allow on the air. Also another big complaint is the fact that script didn't have enough of Mr. Jellineck and Mr. Noblet. I really enjoy those characters but they didn't play that big of role and I think they should have been involved more. Like I said I love the characters in the film for the most part, the original characters are fun and quite enjoyable however most new characters were rather dull and pointless. The movie needed to have more conflict then it did, the plot was based too much on this science fair and that didn't go over well. Also some jokes didn't work which is odd since most jokes on the series always work very well maybe it's because most are rehashed from the TV series.

In Conclusion, I liked the "Strangers with Candy" however I think the television show was better because it had better writing, better jokes, and was bolder and took chances. "Strangers with Candy" the movie was a bit disappointing because I am such a huge fan of the series and it's wasn't bold enough and I thought in general the film held back to much. I really wanted to give this film a 9 out of 10 and I am dead serious that is how high my hopes were for the film. However, the movie isn't that great but the movie is still definitely worth seeing and since it isn't out till fall, I am sure some issues will be corrected. I would recommend it; it's worth the price alone for the wacky characters.

MovieManMenzel's final rating for the "Strangers With Candy" is a 7 out of 10. Not as good as the television series but definitely still worth looking at.