`STRANGERS WITH CANDY' A BIT STRAINED.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

I guess the whole idea of the ``Strangers With Candy'' series that ran on Comedy Central a few years back was to satirize TV's ``afterschool specials.'' That may have worked a little better in half-hour doses than it does in a feature-length film format.

A prequel to the TV show, the ``SWC'' movie plays like a lot of dumb teen comedies. It's smarter than average some of the time, and it can be rather more subversive than the usual nerds-vs.-jocks exercise.

But its comedic grade point average is pretty much locked in C territory.

The film stars Amy Sedaris, who I'm told is a very attractive woman in real life. For Jerri Blank, her character here, Sedaris wears ugly dentures, a permanent scowl, flyaway helmet hair (that can't be an easy combo) and heaven knows what else to make herself look like a freak. Jerri's face is a reliable funny visual. Would that everything else in the film were so consistent.

A hooker and addict who's spent most of her life in prison, Jerri returns home at age 47 to find her father in a parental disappointment-

induced coma. Convincing herself that the best way to wake up Daddy (Dan Hedaya, doing the easiest job in movie history) is to restart her own life from the point where it started going wrong, she goes back to high school.

This is perhaps the stupidest premise for a comedy encountered yet this year (and we've already had Adam Sandler, Jack Black, Rob Schneider and Matthew McConaughey entries). Of course, the school is where all the laughs happen, so it's good that we get there somehow.

But couldn't Sedaris and her writer/co-star pals Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello have come up with a slightly less dopey motivation?

Anyway, the central joke is that, for all of her dweeby desire to excel and be accepted, Jerri often applies prison survival tactics to her educational experience. She introduces herself to the rest of the class like it's her first AA meeting, makes lesbian passes at clueless classmates and often threatens violence when things don't go her way.

Funnily enough, Jerri seems better adjusted than most of the faculty. Current comedy superstar Colbert shines as the highly conflicted, yet still incredibly pompous science teacher Noblet.

He's in love with goofy art teacher Jellineck (Dinello, who also directed the film); but since Noblet's a married, born-again ideologue who's favorite science textbook is the Bible, he doesn't want to act on his queer longings.

Good as Colbert is, you keep wishing he would take Noblet into more daringly controversial territory. The main problem with the whole enterprise is that anything really disturbing -- and therefore, potentially, deeply funny -- is dispensed with before anybody might get upset about it.

Anyway, the wisp of a plotline involves Jerri and her new loser friends trying to win the science fair against the popular kids.

The rival team is coached by Matthew Broderick's Beekman, a slickster who believes these things are all about flashy presentation (and is probably right). Other star cameos include Sarah Jessica Parker as an uncaring guidance counselor, Allison Janney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as suspicious school board wonks and, of all people, distinguished English knight Ian Holm as Dad's doctor (he's not funny at all).

``Strangers With Candy'' is subversive in a ``too silly to be threatening way,'' not unlike ``The Rocky Horror Picture Show,'' and in Jerri, Sedaris has created a very complex comic grotesque, driven by primal urges and constantly getting tripped up by her little-understood but highly active conscience.

I just think she'd be funnier if she wasn't portrayed as so stupid.

And the movie would be hilarious if it had the courage to really wallow in the dysfunctional dementia it pretends to champion.

Bob Strauss, [phone]

bob.strauss(at)dailynews.com

STRANGERS WITH CANDY - Two and one half stars

(R: nudity, violence, sex, language, drug use)

Starring: Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, Deborah Rush, Maria Thayer, Carlo Alban, Gregory Holliman, Matthew Broderick, Dan Hedaya, Ian Holm, Sarah Jessica Parker, Allison Janney, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Director: Paul Dinello.

Running time: 1 hr. 27 min.

Playing: Laemmle Town Center 5, Encino; Laemmle Fallbrook 7, West Hills; Laemmle Playhouse 7, Pasadena; Laemmly Sunset 5, West Hollywood; Landmark NuWilshire, Santa Monica; Edwards University 6, Irvine.

In a nutshell: Fans of the Comedy Central show should dig this prequel about how a middle-aged jailbird wound up going back to high school. The rest of us will laugh sporadically at the hit-and-miss, dirty/subversive humor and cartoonish characters.

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Middle-aged returning public-school student Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) joins the class of her new teacher (Stephen Colbert) in ``Strangers With Candy.''