Drop Dead Sexy

Drop Dead Sexy (2006) from Tuna and Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

Drop Dead Sexy is an eccentric comedy about dumb criminals, featuring Jason Lee and Crispin Glover, presumably because Michael Rappaport was busy. The title is related to the fact that they spend a good portion of their time schlepping around a recently-deceased babe.

Lee plays an unemployed slacker and Glover portrays a gravedigger who is not only dim-witted, but a barely functioning alcoholic as well. At least he's not fat, so he managed to follow one part of Dean Wormer's famous advice. The lads get hoodwinked by a crime lord into driving some cigarettes across the border, but their truck blows up on them, and all the cigarettes are destroyed. Since they used their own truck, the mobster considers them responsible for the shipment, and they find themselves in debt to a violent crime kingpin to the tune of a quarter of a million dollars. Between them they can't come up with a quarter of one dollar, so their only hope to pay off the obligation is to commit additional crimes. The gravedigger remembers that a rich man's wife was wearing a priceless necklace when she was buried, so they reason that they need only to dig her up, steal the necklace, fence it, and pay off their debts.

I'll bet you've guessed that it isn't going to be that simple. It's one of those movies where nothing is as it seems, except for the fact that the woman is really dead, which turns out to be a real problem for our boys, since an incident involving the cemetery's night watchman leaves the lads unable to return her to her grave after the exhumation. They lug her corpse around for the rest of the film's running time. The gravedigger complicates matters still further because he has sexual longings for the corpse. At one point he has a lovely conversation about such longings with the coroner (Brad Dourif), who has his own favorite corpse all washed and ready.

About halfway through, the film morphs from a silly "dumb crooks" comedy into a too-serious murder mystery. It seems that the dead girl drowned, as the police suspected. Only one problem. The cops found her in a lake, and she drowned in heavily chlorinated water. Somehow, our boys get hooked into bringing the swimming pool killer to justice, which works out quite well for them, since it turns out to be the same crime lord who holds their IOU.

The story would have been sufficient just as I have described it, but there are many more characters and sub-plots. There are so many, in fact, that they often seem to contradict one another. The dead rich woman's best friend, who is the film's only really sympathetic character, is offended when Jason Lee insults her dead friend, and talks about how the deceased was really a wonderful, soulful person who married the rich guy because he truly cared for her. Yet in other scenes, we see that she really was the scheming golddigger Jason Lee had accused her of being. I have a feeling that they must have rewritten and re-edited this film many, many times, had remnants of many versions, and couldn't quite fit the various remnants together coherently. The poor fit resulted from the fact that the screenwriters (there are three credited) just couldn't seem to agree on whether the film should be one of those excessively complicated film noirs or an outright farce, and it ended up an uneasy hybrid of the two. Imagine if Abbott and Costello were to replace Humphrey Bogart in the Big Sleep, had all the other characters remained the same. That's the general idea.

It's not a great comedy, but there are a few laughs and a couple of memorable scenes. You have to love a scene where two of cinema's oddest actors, Brad Dourif and Crispin Glover, relax in romantic candlelight, sip white wine, and discuss the merits of a naked corpse. In general, it's fun to watch Glover in this. This is the first time I've ever seen him with a significant speaking part in which his character was nothing like Crispin Glover - and with a deep southern accent to boot! He was as loopy as ever, but in a completely new way.

DVD INFO

No special features
The widescreen transfer is anamorphically enhanced (16x9)
It is currently overpriced. If you want it, wait just a bit. It will soon be available at deeply discounted rates.

NUDITY REPORT

The nudity is kind of disappointing. There is quite a bit of it, but it all comes from an anonymous corpse and the usual background strippers. The principals stay clothed - including the one stripper who is identified!

The Critics Vote ...

No major reviews online. The film premiered at SXSW in March, 2005 (appropriate since it was filmed in Austin), and appeared at a couple more festivals, but never got any bites for theatrical distribution.

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 5.3, which is just about what I expected.

Official site: http://www.dropdeadsexymovie.com/

The meaning of the IMDb score: 7.5 usually indicates a level of excellence equivalent to about three and a half stars from the critics. 6.0 usually indicates lukewarm watchability, comparable to approximately two and a half stars from the critics. The fives are generally not worthwhile unless they are really your kind of material, equivalent to about a two star rating from the critics, or a C- from our system. Films rated below five are generally awful even if you like that kind of film - this score is roughly equivalent to one and a half stars from the critics or a D on our scale. (Possibly even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

Our own guideline:

A means the movie is so good it will appeal to you even if you hate the genre.
B means the movie is not good enough to win you over if you hate the genre, but is good enough to do so if you have an open mind about this type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. In order to rate at least a B-, a film should be both a critical and commercial success. Exceptions: (1) We will occasionally rate a film B- with good popular acceptance and bad reviews, if we believe the critics have severely underrated a film. (2) We may also assign a B- or better to a well-reviewed film which did not do well at the box office if we feel that the fault lay in the marketing of the film, and that the film might have been a hit if people had known about it. (Like, for example, The Waterdance.)
C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by people who enjoy this kind of movie. If this is your kind of movie, a C+ and an A are indistinguishable to you.
C means it is competent, but uninspired genre fare. People who like this kind of movie will think it satisfactory. Others probably will not.
C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie, but genre addicts find it watchable. Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film, but films with this rating should be approached with caution by mainstream audiences, who may find them incompetent or repulsive or both. If this is NOT your kind of movie, a C- and an E are indistinguishable to you.
D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. We don't score films below C- that often, because we like movies and we think that most of them have at least a solid niche audience. Now that you know that, you should have serious reservations about any movie below C-. Films rated below C- generally have both bad reviews and poor popular acceptance.
E means that you'll hate it even if you love the genre.
F means that the film is not only unappealing across-the-board, but technically inept as well.

Based on this description, this film is a C-, a watchable oddball comedy. Not a big winner, and not even mainstream because of the strong necrophilia thread, but capable of pleasing a cult audience with some dark, offbeat comedy.