Product Details

• Actors: Amy Sedaris, Dan Hedaya, Ian Holm, Justin Theroux, Matthew Broderick
• Directors: Paul Dinello
• Format: NTSC
• Language: English (Dolby Digital 5.1)
• Subtitles: Spanish
• Region: All Regions
• Aspect Ratio: 2.55:1
• Number of discs: 1
• Rated: R (Restricted)
• Studio: IMAGE/THINKFILMS
• DVD Release Date: July 27, 2006
• Run Time: 91 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (60 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000HC2OBO
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #33,804 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Strangers With Candy" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com

Comedy Central's creatively crass "after-school special," Strangers with Candy, takes a well-deserved curtain call with this feature film version of the series. Canceled (some fans felt prematurely) after only three seasons, each SWC episode told the story of Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris), the 46-year-old former "boozer, user, and loser" who goes back to high school to pick up "exactly where (she) left off."

The principal audience for this film will be folks who already know the show and need a Candy fix, and they'll be relieved to find that most of the original cast has returned. Co-creators Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello are there (Dinello also directed the movie), and other favorites include Greg Hollimon as Principal Onyx Blackman; Maria Thayer as Jerri's best girlfriend, Tammi Littlenut; Deborah Rush as Jerri's wicked stepmother; and David Pasquesi as her stepmother's lover, Stew. (A few key supporting characters, including Jerri's ethnic friend Orlando, and her half-brother Derrick, have been recast.) The smaller parts are filled out by the biggest stars, including Sarah Jessica Parker, Matthew Broderick, and Philip Seymour Hoffman; Broderick deserves two thumbs up for his turn as the superstar science teacher, Dr. Roger Beekman.

SWC the movie plays almost as a Reader's Digest version of the show, with Jerri up to her old tricks, including betraying friends and trying to seduce the popular boys. If diehard fans find any fault with the film, it may be that the script doesn't cover enough new territory; a hilarious opening sequence of Miss Blank in prison, for example, only leaves one wanting more. For those who haven't yet matriculated with Jerri, the best way to get to know her wickedly misguided ways is through the series. The show was like cake... the movie is just the icing. --Leah Weathersby

Product Description

Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris) is a forty-seven year old ex-con who decides to return to her childhood home after thirty-two years working the streets and in prison. Upon her arrival, she discovers her father is in a self-induced coma. Hoping to wake him, Jerri decides to turn her life around by picking it up exactly where she left off - as a high school freshman. But for a former boozer, user and loser, hanging with the `in-crowd is going to be harder than turning tricks!

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Jerri Blank, a hilarious anti-heroine July 16, 2006

By Lleu Christopher

Even though I was a fan of the Comedy Central TV series that it's based on, I did not have the highest expectations for this film. Maybe thinking of the many so-so adaptations of movies based on Saturday Night Live sketches and the like, I would have been satisfied with a few laughs. Instead, I found this to be a brilliant, hilarious, almost perfect rendition of the uniquely bizarre, radically Un-PC series. Perhaps it was because they virtually transplanted the entire cast of writers and actors from the series to the big screen, nothing was lost. Amy Sedaris plays Jerri Blank, the freaky middle-aged bisexual drug addict who, just out of prison, tries to fit in at high school and at home with her equally bizarre family. Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello reprise their roles as, respectively, the science and art teacher who are having a secret affair. This is made more amusing by the fact that Noblet (Colbert) is a fundamentalist who teaches that evolution is a fraud. At home, Jerri has a father who is in a coma (in the TV series, the father was a literal dummy; here he is played by an actor), a stepmother and stepbrother who despise her, and the stepmother's always-present "meat man" boyfriend who only wants to watch TV. The film actually has a fairly conventional plot involving a science fair competition, which reigns in the weirdness to some extent.

Strangers With Candy is not for everyone; in particular, it's not for the politically or culturally sensitive. The black principal at Jerry's high school, who has a gambling problem, is actually named Onyx Blackman; there are a constant stream of jokes at the expense of various ethnic types and homosexuals. Jerri has a confederate flag hanging in her bedroom, a detail that is not even spoken of. Sedaris does her utmost to make her alter ego Jerri as unattractive, stupid and, in many ways even repulsive as possible. Viewers are alternately tempted to laugh at her, feel sorry for her and simply shake their heads at her utter cluelessness. This, along with the rest of the uniformly weird characters makes for a kind of comedy that is both slapstick and absurd and at the same time hard-edged. It lacks the soft, sentimental core of mainstream comedies. You realize that these people are truly &%$#ed-up beyond repair and they are never going to change. This is, I suppose, sad, but it is also funny and, in its own way, more honest than most of what Hollywood dishes out.

Strangers With Candy is a thorough send-up of conventionality, moralistic cliches and the self-righteous hypocrisy of many authority figures. I suppose, along with shows like The Simpsons and South Park, it could be called cynical, even nihilistic in its portrayal of everyone as selfish and corrupt. But the complete absurdity of it all, which borders on the surreal, prevents us from taking its amorality any more seriously than we can take the pseudo-morality of its dysfunctional parents, teachers and school administrators. I found it to be the funniest movie I've seen in a long time.

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars VERY FUNNY FIRST HALF LOSES STEAM THROUGH THE SECOND HALF May 5, 2007

By ! MR. KNOW IT ALL ;-b VINE™ VOICE

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

I never really watched the TV series, but my wife enjoyed it. I watched this movie with her and I must admit, it was hard not to laugh. The film did seem to cool down a bit in the secand half,but it was pretty funny overall.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Jerri Blank November 10, 2006

By Raff D. Hall

Format:DVD

Out of prison & unleashed on Flatpoint once again, for the first time. A prequel to the best politically incorrect TV comedy perhaps ever (at least besides All In the Family). Laughs galore as Jerri tries to adjust to life outside the harsh penal system. It is not easy, especially for everyone inside Jerri's "chow zone". You may take a beating or perhaps loose a finger, but Jerri is loyal to her bitches. If anyone messes with her friends, she'll stick 'em with a shive in the showers. Violent slapstick, vulgar sexual content and other delights await.