Sordid Lives

I did get a kick out of the film in a couple of places. Two drunken women plan to get revenge for the infidelity of one of their husbands, so they hold guns on the husband, and the wife says "now you tell me just why you needed to cheat on me with that slut", whereupon her girlfriend said "hey, thet's my momma yer talkin' about". It turns out that the husband feels doubly guilty. He not only cheated on his wife with her best friend's mamma, but he killed the pool ol' gal at the motel by carelessly leaving his wooden legs lying around. She tripped on them on her way to the bathroom, cracked her head, that's all she wrote.

A couple of other things were kinda funny. For example, at all times there were big buckets of fried food lying around every room, and people were nibbling constantly.

On the other hand, the film was really loud and screechy. Everyone talked too loud and delivered the punch lines as if they were expecting a background drummer to deliver a rim-shot.

DVD info from Amazon

2 Deleted Songs By Olivia Newton-John
Alternate Opening And 9 Deleted Scenes With Commentary
Director/Producer/Cast Audio Commentary & Interviews
Widescreen anamorphic format, 1.85

The biggest negative is that there are times when this movie takes itself way too seriously. I really got disoriented by the mood swings. It would get funny, then it would portray one of the gay guys as tragic, and he'd be crying away while talking to his shrink in a completely serious scene. Odd stuff, and I didn't really like it at all when it would turn dead serious in the middle of broad, cynical farce.

By the way, if you are wondering what ever happened to Delta Burke, Bonnie Bedelia, and Olivia Newton-John, and if you love the music of Tammy Wynette, this is your movie. Newton-John sings a lot, and when she isn't singing, the gay transvestite guy is doing his act as a bad Tammy Wynette impersonator.

The Critics Vote

Rotten Tomatoes summary. 42% positive.

The People Vote ...

IMDB summary. IMDb voters score it 6.5/10

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. 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 even less, depending on just how far below five the rating is.

My 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. C means it will only appeal to genre addicts, and has no crossover appeal. (C+ means it has no crossover appeal, but will be considered excellent by genre fans, while C- indicates that it we found it to be a poor movie although genre addicts find it watchable). D means you'll hate it even if you like the genre. 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.

Any film rated C- or better is recommended for fans of that type of film. Any film rated B- or better is recommended for just about anyone. 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-.

Based on this description, this film is a C. It's not a great comedy, but it has a few laughs at the expense of white trash. That's not exactly a high difficulty level, is it?