Christina Ricci has great fun playing 16-year old trailer trash Dede Truitt in this witty comedy about sex and relationships. She starts by throwing chairs at her stepfathers coffin and running away from home before progressing to seducing her half-brothers boyfriend and ending up pregnant. All in the first half-hour. The rest of the film has her trying several schemes to try and get $10,000 off her brother, mercilessly exploiting other peoples sympathy and her own sexuality.
What she hadn't counted on was Lisa Kudrow's character, a friend of the gay half-brother who is every bit as determined as Dedee and follows her everywhere to try and thwart her plans. Kudrow shows that at least one of the Friends cast can actually act as another character and is rewarded with plenty of scathingly funny retorts and putdowns which I tried to remember to use myself but which came so thick and fast I soon got lost. Ricci also has her fair share of cutting comments and seeing these two women boss various men (both gay and straight) around while striking sparks off each other is the films main strength. The rest is fairly average rumination on love and loss, which thankfully never falls too far into melodrama and doesn't tug too hard on the heart strings either. |
