Okay, here’s the deal. Sometimes there’s a parody that gently tweaks conventions while still maintaining a sense of self and being generally likable and sympathetic. And sometimes there is a parody that picks up a baseball bat and wades into a sea of tropes, swinging at anything it can reach.

Drop Dead Gorgeous is one of the latter parodies. It hits small-town-hick tropes, Upper Midwest tropes, beauty-contest tropes, closet-quasi-pedo-lech tropes. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Sometimes it does.

Nutshell: Sarah Rose Cosmetics is on the hunt for the American Teen Princess. In tiny Mount Rose, Minnesota, the angelic Amber and bitchy Becky face off for the local crown against a backdrop of supporting actors who all seem thrilled to have a chance to be so relentlessly mean. This is also the movie where, if you paid attention, you get to say, “I already know Amy Adams” any time someone tried to pull any “Have you seen this young actress from Junebug?” shit on you. (She’s hilarious in this, no joke; if you’ve seen it, she was totally impossible to forget.)

“They’re never gonna let you perform naked, I asked.”
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