Lipstick thespians: the clever and caustic Girls Will Be girls offers more than the usual drag shenanigans.This is so not your auntie's drag movie. Sure, the dialogue's as bawdy as ever--"I met Fred MacMurray at the Brown Derby when they were casting Flubber, and he threw me a juicy part," recalls Evie Harris (Jack Plotnick), to which Coco (Clinton Leupp) harrumphs, "And then he put you in the picture"--but the film's stars deliver it in that minimalist deadpan style that marks turn-of-the-millennium humor. Both outrageous and restrained, Girls Will Be Girls borrows from the classic showbiz melodramas--All About Eve, Valley of the Dolls Valley of the Dolls portrays self-destruction of drug addicted starlets. [Am. Lit.: Valley of the Dolls] See : Drug Addiction , What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?--but still feels fresh and inspired. The same, alas, can hardly be said for washed-up actress Evie, who spends her days puttering around her past-its-prime Hollywood mansion (complete with Bicentennial bi·cen·ten·ni·al adj. 1. Happening once every 200 years. 2. Lasting for 200 years. 3. Relating to a 200th anniversary. n. A 200th anniversary or its celebration. Also called bicentenary. Room) chain-smoking, chaindrinking, and abusing her put-upon maid, Coco. Into this maelstrom of malaise wanders wide-eyed ingenue in·gé·nue also in·ge·nue n. 1. A naive, innocent girl or young woman. 2. a. The role of an ingénue in a dramatic production. b. An actress playing such a role. Varla (Jeffery Roberson), a would-be actress-singer whose mother just happens to be the rising starlet star·let n. 1. A small star. 2. A young film actress publicized as a future star. starlet Noun a young actress who has the potential to become a star Noun 1. whom Evie screwed over years ago to get the lead role in the disaster movie Asteroid asteroid, planetoid, or minor planet, small body orbiting the sun. More than 10,000 asteroids have orbits sufficiently well known to have been cataloged and named; thousands more exist. . Has Varla sworn revenge? Will Evie rekindle her career with her "speciamercial"? Will Coco ever reconnect with the love of her life--the doctor who performed those abortions on her decades ago? Girls Will Be Girls juggles its characters and plotlines well, giving these talented performers enough to do to get them through three acts without growing tiresome. The characters actually grow and evolve as human beings while still remaining bizarre and uproarious. The movie shrewdly plays to its stars' strengths: Leupp makes Coco an Eve Arden for the 21st century, the garrulous gar·ru·lous adj. 1. Given to excessive and often trivial or rambling talk; tiresomely talkative. 2. Wordy and rambling: a garrulous speech. and hilarious Roberson gets to work in Varla's legendary spray-cheese stunt, and Plotnick's Evie delivers the naughty one-liners about fellow eelebs with wicked aplomb. (Some of those one-liners will sound familiar to fans of Plotnick and Dennis Hensley's acclaimed Internet short Evie Harris: Shining Stay:) These divas are talented enough to merit this delicious star vehicle, and they make the most of the opportunity. No doubt we haven't seen the last of these Girls, nor of talented writer-director Richard Day. Girls Will Be Girls * Written and directed by Richard Day * Staffing Jack Plotnick, Clinton Leupp, and Jeffery Roberson IFC (Internet Foundation Classes) A class library from Netscape that provides an application framework and graphical user interface (GUI) routines for Java programmers. IFC was later made part of the Java Foundation Classes (JFC). See JFC, AFC and AWT. See also ICF. Films |
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