Drop Dead Gorgeous (1999)

This film takes place in the small Minnesota town of "Mount Rose" where a teenage beauty pageant is about to be held. Although this pageant is held there every year what makes this one somewhat unique is the fact that the head of the pageant "Gladys Leeman" (Kirstie Allen) has her own daughter "Rebecca Leeman" (Denise Richards) as one of the contestants. To make matters even worse, Gladys is the wife of the richest man in the town and as a result she has a great deal of influence over the judges. Yet in spite of this the contest remains in doubt as there are a few young ladies who pose as obstacles to Rebecca's success. And it's then that they each start dying under mysterious circumstances one by one. Now rather than reveal any more I will just say that, although some of the humor was rather crude, the director (Michael Patrick Jann) and writer (Lona Williams) really managed to capture the hypocrisy and self-righteous bigotry of some of the people who happen to reside in small towns. Naturally, not all small towns are as bad as this film portrays and not all people are as shallow-minded as shown here either. But there is definitely a problem in some small towns and this film nails it really well. Be that as it may, I really liked the performance of Allison Janney (as "Loretta") who I thought was totally hilarious. Likewise, having several attractive actresses like Kirsten Dunst (as "Amber Atkins"), Amy Adams ("Leslie Miller") and the aforementioned Denise Richards certainly didn't hurt in any way either. All things considered then, I rate this movie as slightly above average and recommend it to those who might be interested in a satirical film of this type.