“Drop Dead Gorgeous” was filmed in 1995. This marked the fiftieth anniversary of the nation’s oldest beauty contest, The Sarah Rose Cosmetics American Teen Princess Pageant. The film shows a documentary in which a film crew was sent to a small town in Minnesota to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary. The film was based in Mount Rose, Minnesota with Gladys Leeman, former pageant winner, as Local Chairman. Her daughter, Rebecca Leeman, competes in this year’s pageant. Amber Atkins was also a pageant contestant this year following her mother, Annette Atkins, former pageant winner, in her footsteps. Throughout the film, Amber Atkins and Rebecca Leeman are the main rivals. The Leemans are the richest family in the town and they do everything they can to make sure Rebecca wins the pageant.
The beginning of all of the nonsense that goes on leading up to the pageant was the death of Tammy Curry, pageant contestant, when her tractor blew up while she was riding it on her farm. A picture of Tammy Curry was put in Amber’s locker with the writing “You’re next,” written on the back. Then, love interest of Amber, Bret, is shot between the eyes and killed. Rebecca Leeman is shown practicing shooting the guns that her mother gave her for their shooting range. To make things even worse, there was a fire in the Atkins trailer and her mother was severely burned and placed in a hospital. Amber wants to quit the pageant at this point, but her mother says she can’t because she sacrificed everything for her and wants her to get out of this town and have a great life. On the night of the dress rehearsal, one of the pageant contestants switches numbers with Amber and while was performing during Amber’s original time, a light fell and hit her on the head. She could not continue in the pageant and was pronounced deaf. During the pageant, Amber’s talent, tap dancing, dress was stolen and she was almost unable to compete, but one of the other contestants dropped out so Amber could wear her costume. In the end, Rebecca took the crown with Amber as runner up.
After the pageant was over, there was a parade in the town for the winners. Rebecca Leeman was riding on a swan float made in Mexico. Her mother, Gladys, lit one of the firework decorations and caused the entire float to blow up and kill her daughter, Rebecca. Gladys started yelling and confessed to all of the crimes committed leading up to and during the pageant and was placed in prison. Amber was then named winner of the Sarah Rose Cosmetics Teen Princess Pageant and went on to compete in State competition. She won by default as State as well when all of the other contestants got food poisoning from the shellfish that was served as their meal. When the State winners got to Nationals, they discovered that Sarah Rose Cosmetics was closed down. Amber Atkins went on to become a news reporter and became famous on television just like she always dreamed of.
“Drop Dead Gorgeous” is in the comedy genre and I believe some parts are funny, but others are quite disturbing. A lot of the scenes such as the ones showing death, blowing up, throwing up, burning to death, getting a concussion as well as others, are much more disgusting than they are funny. On paper they seem like they would be funny, but when you see the scenes, they are not as funny as they were meant to be. I believe that this film should be in the comedy section, but overall it is not very funny. It seems to me to be more of a spoof on beauty pageants, much like the movies that make fun of scary movies, “Scary Movie.”
The director of the film did very well in choosing how to film the movie. Since the movie was supposed to be filmed by a small film crew making a documentary, the filming was a little shaky as if the camera was held instead of very steady professional camera crew. The director also made a good choice in making the crew become seen as if they were a part of the movie instead of just filming it. The film crew interacts with the actors and makes it more believable as a documentary. I also liked the choice of actors and actresses. They all did a great job in portraying their role and looked like normal people and not people acting in a movie. The director did a great job in making great choices for this particular film.
I enjoyed “Drop Dead Gorgeous” and would definitely watch it again. It was not the best film I have seen, but it was amusing and not a typical Hollywood movie. I like the type of movies that you can’t predict what will happen and if you try, something bizarre throws your predictions completely out of where you expected them to go. This movie was so unpredictable and every plot movement seemed to come out of nowhere. “Drop Dead Gorgeous” was a movie with a mind-boggling plot I would never expect simply by knowing the name of the film.