Three things positively stood out for me in this movie. The first was the comedic necrophilic attraction that Eddie (Crispin Glover) has to Crystal's (Melissa Keller) corpse. Although this attraction - in the context of the sexist tropes that permeate much of the movie - may be read as an extreme case of the sexual objectification of women (Crystal is portrayed literally merely as an object of lust and desire for mainly male viewers), Michael Philip manages to put some comedic romantic depth to it and to pull off some memorable funny moments in it in the process. In addition, one has to applaud Philip here for the courage to touch, in a comedy and not horror, a subject (necrophilia) that is considered by many to be the epitome of taboos. The second positive thing about the movie was Melissa Parker's convincing performance as a corpse (laying still like that cannot be as easy as it looks) and the Makeup Department for having managed to give her that pale corpse look in a manner that seems convincing but not off-putting.
The third and most striking aspect of the movie that I found to be have been significant was Amber Heard's performance. Heard has publicly stated that she always strives to bring depths to the characters she plays and in no other movies of hers that I have so far watched in her earliest works (2004-2005) is this statement truer than in this movie. She plays Candy, a stripper in a somewhat run-down strip club that Crystal used to work in and that Frank (Jason Lee) and Eddie visit during the course of their blackmail plan that is at the heart of the movies plot. When she first appears, she attends to Eddie in the club and it is immediately clear that the two have met before and that she's genuinely attracted to him. Her later appearances in the movie are all as a part of developing Candy as a romantic interest for Eddie. Despite this sexist and limiting aspect of her character in the movie, Heard succeeds in infusing compassion and care to Candy in a manner that could hardly have been surpassed by any other performer. Indeed, this shows in the way that she, as Candy, looks at Eddie every time she sees him and in the way that she shows authentic concern for him and for his life and feelings while they're together. One sees, and certainly feels, through Heard's performance that, despite the stripper-client dynamic that Candy and Eddie often appear in, Candy sees and feels Eddie as more than just a client. Consequently, the viewer is not at all surprised to see both of them lovingly together outside a strip club in the final scenes of the movie. In short, Heard convincingly and captivatingly manages to impart a compassionate and caring depth to Candy, a character whose two-dimensional sexist limitations would have made her, in the eyes of the viewer, appear as little more than something of a stereotype or a trope (the stripper looking for a way out of sex work into a more "stable" life as provided for one of her clients).
Other than her performance, I would be committing a deception by omission if I did not mention how beautiful and sensual Amber is in this movie. She is so much so that, coupled with her performance, I'm certain that many a viewer of this movie (including myself) have lamented that she was not given a more prominent role in it. I hold, for example, that she would have made for a better Natalie than Audrey Marie Anderson did (no offense to her or her performance). And her beauty is, unsurprisingly, only enhanced by the stylish costumes that John H. Smith (Costume and Wardrobe Department) adorns her character with. (Smith does a wonderful job for Melissa Keller's character too.)
Despite all these however, Heard's appearance in this movie represents a disappointing trend in her earlier works in which directors sought to only use her to add sexual appeal to their movies. So it is even all the more impressive when in the face of this limitation, she still managed, in simple but notable ways, to always stretch the earlier characters that she played to one or more extra dimensions than the ones that the filmmakers sought to confine them within. And this, as has been shown, is exactly what she did with Candy in this movie.
The positives aside, as a work of comedy, the movie is largely unremarkable. Crispin Glover's performance in this respect is subpar, Jason Lee's is average, and their "chemistry" is virtually nonexistent. In addition, many attempted jokes or comedic moments do not succeed. Another problem is the movie's poor representation of women: All women in the movie appear to be either the objects of sex or desire for men (in the movie and/or the audience) and/or to be merely aides to men's goals and endeavors in the movie i.e. Their "helpers".
For these failings, I would have given the movie a 4 but I choose to give it a 6 because of the presence of Amber Heard and of her magnificent performance in it. I'd moderately strongly recommend this movie to all Amber Heard enthusiasts and fans or those curious to see her in her earliest roles. I'd also recommend it to those that may be amused by or in other ways interested in necrophilia-based humor. I would however not recommend it to anyone that's purely looking for a laugh without any darkness to it or to anyone that would find its sexist elements off-putting or unethical.
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