It's difficult to be sure why this movie was ever made. It does not seem to have much of any point. The comedy tries to hard and stretches too much to even come close to working. Without the comedy working, any remaining plot or other structure seems embarrasingly absent.
The one highlight of the film is the performance by Beth Grant as Sissy. She masters her role here, injecting hilarious inflection and mannerisms to the film ... even where the scriptwriters have fallen flat (which is the norm for this movie). Bonnie Bedelia's Latrelle and Ann Walker's La Vonda are also good performances, though not as memorable. Leslie Jordan plays his role of Brother Boy well also, but unfortunately his character is more annoying than shocking or interesting.
As for the movies major failures, there are too many to count. For one personal bias, I have to confess that I thought "Best in Show" and "Spinal Tap" were excellent, funny movies, while "Waiting for Guffman" was a complete bore and forced its laughs too hard (and they weren't very funny). Like "Waiting for Guffman", this movie relies heavily on your capacity to find the mere existence of small-town, backwoods people hilarious at face value. If you're not convinced by this premise, the caricatures are too over-the-top and annoying.
Watching this film was like watching old films where merely playing an alcoholic -- a la Foster Brooks on the Dean Martin Roasts -- was the entire foundation for comedy. Here the court jesters are rednecks, but it takes a lot more than caricatures to make good comedy. The result is a movie that comes off like a more deviant episode of "Mama's Family"... just replace Carol Burnett with Bonnie Bedelia.
There are two gay sub-plots to this movie that really seem to have no real connection other than the writers came up with the hair-brained formula of, "take rednecks (=funny); add gays (=funnier)". But at the same time, the movie tries to put on this gay acceptance posture at the same time it's also trying to use gayness as a laugh reflex. Hypocritical.
And why bother with Olivia Newton John at all? Talk about pointless window-dressing.
I lost patience with this film once the focus was off Beth Grant, and the rest of the film careened like a ghost-riding semi down a cliff.
If you think rednecks and gayness are comedic in their own right, you may think this is a great film. But if not, chances are that you'll find this movie doesn't have a wooden leg to stand on. Despite some redeeming performances, this was unquestionably among the 2-3 worst movies I've seen among the past 50.
The one highlight of the film is the performance by Beth Grant as Sissy. She masters her role here, injecting hilarious inflection and mannerisms to the film ... even where the scriptwriters have fallen flat (which is the norm for this movie). Bonnie Bedelia's Latrelle and Ann Walker's La Vonda are also good performances, though not as memorable. Leslie Jordan plays his role of Brother Boy well also, but unfortunately his character is more annoying than shocking or interesting.
As for the movies major failures, there are too many to count. For one personal bias, I have to confess that I thought "Best in Show" and "Spinal Tap" were excellent, funny movies, while "Waiting for Guffman" was a complete bore and forced its laughs too hard (and they weren't very funny). Like "Waiting for Guffman", this movie relies heavily on your capacity to find the mere existence of small-town, backwoods people hilarious at face value. If you're not convinced by this premise, the caricatures are too over-the-top and annoying.
Watching this film was like watching old films where merely playing an alcoholic -- a la Foster Brooks on the Dean Martin Roasts -- was the entire foundation for comedy. Here the court jesters are rednecks, but it takes a lot more than caricatures to make good comedy. The result is a movie that comes off like a more deviant episode of "Mama's Family"... just replace Carol Burnett with Bonnie Bedelia.
There are two gay sub-plots to this movie that really seem to have no real connection other than the writers came up with the hair-brained formula of, "take rednecks (=funny); add gays (=funnier)". But at the same time, the movie tries to put on this gay acceptance posture at the same time it's also trying to use gayness as a laugh reflex. Hypocritical.
And why bother with Olivia Newton John at all? Talk about pointless window-dressing.
I lost patience with this film once the focus was off Beth Grant, and the rest of the film careened like a ghost-riding semi down a cliff.
If you think rednecks and gayness are comedic in their own right, you may think this is a great film. But if not, chances are that you'll find this movie doesn't have a wooden leg to stand on. Despite some redeeming performances, this was unquestionably among the 2-3 worst movies I've seen among the past 50.