Strangers With Candy vs Pee-Wee's Big Adventure

If Strangers With Candy starred, say, a Wayans or two, or maybe Rob Schneider, a few things would be true: The main character would be male and would have a hot girlfriend in her twenties; it would open on 3,000 screens and spawn a sequel year after next; and, most importantly, it would suck. Hard. A lot.

But no. Strangers with Candy stars Amy Sedaris. The result is that the main character is female, middle-aged, repulsive, alone, playing in limited release, and very, very funny. Fine by me.

Some of you will not get Strangers With Candy, or its main character, Jerri Blank, and I feel your pain: I didn’t play with Transformers as a kid, and I’m already suffering for that every time my friends complain about whatever that used to be a scooter and is now a helicopter, and that movie isn’t even out for another year. So if you haven’t seen Strangers With Candy on Comedy Central or DVD, wandering into the theater might leave you a little confused and/or disgusted by Jerri. I’m pretty sure you’ll still find her funny, but just in case, here’s a short primer:

Jerri Blank is a forty-six year old high school freshman, who has returned to relive her life from the moment everything went to hell the first time. For the past thirty-two years, she’s been a drug-addict, whore, criminal, and dozens upon dozens of other untold horrors. On one episode of the series that inspired the movie, Jerri confessed, “I did things I wouldn’t force on a mule; and that includes things I forced on a mule.” Jerri is one of the more…interesting looking characters in recent memory, and her personality fits her appearance. Back at home, Jerri has to contend with her new stepmother and brother, as well as the ever-present local butcher (who has a temper unlike anyone Jerri’s met outside of prison), and her beloved father, who fell into a stress-induced coma the day Jerri ran away. He still managed to remarry and have another kid, so no one in the Blank household is in much position to judge Jerri, not that they hesitate for a second.

School isn’t much more welcoming for Jerri. The teachers at Flatpoint High are so undedicated, disinterested and immature that they’re passing their own notes via students. The principal’s office is as corrupt as the slimiest politician’s, and the teachers’ lounge is literally a lounge, with cocktails, smoke, and singles hooking up. My favorite of these is a sleepy-eyed, half-drunk, compassionless grief counselor played by Sarah Jessica Parker. She leans against the bar like she’s waiting for Mr. Goodbar or Klute or maybe a certain visiting science fair expert.

Strangers With Candy was written by the television show’s creators, Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello (and directed by Dinello). The characters all speak in a backwards logic that certainly sounds sensitive and inspirational, but usually ends up being selfish. My favorite example: “I wasn’t pushing you away, I was pulling me toward myself.” Strangers With Candy’s most obvious target is the old Afterschool Special movies, but there digs at Never Been Kissed, She’s All That, Mean Girls, the John Hughes comedies of the 1980s, and self-serious inspirational teacher dramas like Dead Poets Society and Dangerous Minds. Like those movies, ultimately the plot is unimportant (in Strangers with Candy, it’s unnecessary, and treated as such); what matters is that soft music and lighting accompany every nasty sentiment.

Amy Sedaris will probably not get the credit she deserves for Strangers with Candy. If you’ve ever seen her on Letterman, you know that the physical transformation she goes through to become Jerri Blank is near shocking in its details. What Sedaris accomplishes as Jerri Blank is not so different from what Charlize Theron was so widely praised (admittedly, by yours truly) for doing in Monster. The difference is, Charlize Theron didn’t invent Aileen Wournos, while Sedaris made up Jerri Blank on her own. But Blank gets no redemption, learns nothing, grows not a bit. We can’t learn anything from her, or feel any pity or sorrow. We can only laugh and cringe, like when Jerri answers the question, “Are you thinking about the science fair?” with “I’m thinking about pussy.” Hey, no one said she was charming. She’s so uninhibitedly original and funny though, that Strangers with Candy is the first movie I’ve attended since Attack of the Clones that ended in applause from the audience. I guess just the funny ones get applause.

Sedaris’ immersion into Jerri Blank isn’t unlike what Mike Myers does as Austin Powers, I suppose, except we have virtually no other experience with Sedaris, so Jerri feels completely real. In that way, she reminds me most of Pee-Wee Herman. Watching Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, it’s hard to comprehend that Pee-Wee isn’t some weird person who got his own movie, but rather a character who has been created over the years with such precision that there’s practically no separating the actor from the role. I suppose it’s been frustrating for Paul Reubens, but during Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure, it’s a pleasure.

Pee-Wee, unlike Jerri, has luck, friends, nice clothes (well, clean clothes at least), and above all, a fantastic bicycle. When his bike is stolen, Pee-Wee travels cross-country trying to find it, making new friends and enemies along the way. It’s such a good, funny time, but like Strangers with Candy, it’s just beyond some people’s boundaries of tolerance for outsized personalities and the unconventional lives they lead. Good; more for the rest of us. Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure trumps Strangers with Candy in its inventiveness, but with Tim Burton as director, it would almost have to.

So, if you’re one of the lucky ones living in a city playing Strangers with Candy, go for it: get your freak on. If not, there’s always Little Man. I hear his girlfriend is hot.

Strangers with Candy: B+
Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure: A