|The recurring nightmare that afflicts so many of us – being suddenly and inexplicably plucked out of adulthood and sent back to high school – is the premise of “Strangers With Candy.”
Not that its heroine, a 47-year-old named Jerri Blank, whose post-adolescent life is a catalog of dysfunction, including multiple addictions and a long stint in jail, is necessarily someone with whom we’re supposed to identify. As incarnated by Amy Sedaris, who also played the character on the Comedy Central series from which the movie has been belatedly spun, Jerri is a fascinating grotesque.
Sedaris presents an unnerving combination of prison-yard street smarts and profound dumbness. By turns needy and belligerent, repulsive and almost sweet, Jerri is one of those sketch-comedy creations, like Martin Short’s Ed Grimley or Gilda Radner’s Lisa Loopner, that somehow transcends caricature to become – well, human might be overstating it, but you know what I mean.
Written by Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello, who also directed, “Strangers With Candy” does not quite rise above its spoofy, basic-cable origins. Like many feature films based on small-screen, short-form comedy, it feels more like a long, sloppy “very special” episode than a movie.
In addition to Sedaris’ utter immunity to embarrassment and ability to toss off jokes that explode a few beats after you think they will, the movie offers a grab bag of geeky, juvenile humor. As a setting, the modern American high school is shopworn and inexhaustible, with an ever-replenishing supply of jocks, nerds and mean girls.
There is also a pompous, corrupt principal (Gregory Hollimon) and a bevy of amusing cameos. Allison Janney and Philip Seymour Hoffman are school board officials and science fair judges; Sarah Jessica Parker is the school grief counselor, who keeps a tip jar on her desk; and Matthew Broderick is Roger Beekman, the most renowned high school science teacher and science fair project impresario in whichever state this is supposed to be.
As such, he is the nemesis of Colbert’s science teacher character, who is, in turn, the former lover of Dinello’s wayward art teacher. The plot wanders through various naughty and absurd situations en route to the big science-fair climax, which will also be Jerri’s big chance at redemption.
Her father (Dan Hedaya) has been in a coma ever since she ran away from home, leaving his returned prodigal to contend with an icy stepmom (Deborah Rush), a thuggish stepbrother (Joseph Cross) and a guy named Stew (David Pasquesi).
The “Strangers With Candy” series was, explicitly, a parody of the “After School Specials” that, in the pre-cable past, used to supply America’s youth with useful and important moral lessons. This movie, its aggressive impudence notwithstanding, upholds that tradition, reminding us to be ourselves, follow our dreams and be very glad that we never have to set foot in a high school again.
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“Strangers With Candy”
R for vulgar sexual humor and drug references|1 hour, 27 minutes|COMEDY|Directed by Paul Dinello; written by Stephen Colbert, Dinello and Amy Sedaris; photography by Oliver Bokelberg; starring Sedaris, Colbert, Dinello, Deborah Rush, Maria Thayer, Chris Pratt, Elisabeth Harnois, Gregory Hollimon, Dan Hedaya, Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Allison Janney, Philip Seymour Hoffman.|Opens today at the Mayan Theatre.