Die, Mommie, Die! (2003)

A Major Disappointment

Yo, there's no way for me to review this film without saying, take your *insert ethnicity + "ass" here* to see this film,like now. You have to see it in order to know what you're really messing with.

This is one of the best movies I’ve seen in a very long time. You have to go and see this on the big screen.

One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

After noticing that the star of this film is a drag queen than you start to wonder what else this story has to offer and that's where the main problem of this satiric effort lies. Story is set in the 1960's (I think so, anyway) where we see a faded former singing star named Angela Arden (Charles Busch) and she wants to divorce her husband Sol Sussman (Philip Baker Hall) who's a has-been Hollywood producer. Their children are virginal Edith (Natasha Lyonne) who loves her father but hates her mother and homosexual pothead Lance (Stark Sands) who has the opposite feelings towards his parents.*****SPOILER ALERT***** Sol won't give Angela a divorce so she decides to kill him by dipping a suppository in arsenic and inserting it! Sol dies and the authorities consider it just a heart attack but Edith and Lance start to think that their mother was up to it. The local gigolo Tony Parker (Jason Priestley) is bisexual and has slept with both Edith and Lance and he starts to investigate the death of Sol but when the maid Bootsie Carp (Frances Conroy) pops up dead than it seems just a matter of time to find proof that Angela is behind things. After drugging Angela with LSD she admits not only to Sol's death but also the circumstances involving her twin sister Barbara.This is directed by Mark Rucker who makes his debut and though he has to somehow get around the minuscule budget the films weakness has nothing to do with the production values. The script is a campy send-up of the older melodrama's from both the 50's and 60's and as I watched this several films came to mind like "Peyton Place", "Valley of the Dolls", "Sunset Boulevard", "Straight Jacket", and many of Douglas Sirk's efforts. The main joke in the film is Busch in drag resembling Joan Crawford but with the characters last name of Arden I couldn't help but think of actress Eve Arden whom Busch also resembles. But that part of the films humor wears out so quickly that everything else seems thrown in to try and fill out the script to a near 90 minutes and the ridiculous ending doesn't help either. The film has many in-jokes and the characters all display silly behavior but even die hard camp lovers will find this effort (at best) a tedious offering.

Yes it i campy, yes it is a "gay" flick (whatever that is)... but it is a great Indy film which uses good old fashioned stagecraft and leave the FX to other films with lesser plots. Of course I am not gay, but I love good film. and this is good film.I have read the commentary on the DVD and I was touched that they even mentioned the Architect of the house. As an architect myself, I know we are a hidden bunch. The home is a great piece of California Hillside architecture, and Paul Williams is a master.An interesting point is this film was shot in 18 days...I read a snippet where this was not in Nebraska.... Well after living here 15 years, I could provide Mr. Busch with enough material about Norfolk to keep him busy for quite some time.

Screenwriter Charles Busch has adapted 'Die Mommie Die' from his own stage play. A transvestite, Busch also plays the lead role of Angela Arden, a washed-up torch singer in the late 1960's who murders her movie producer husband by giving him an arsenic-laced suppository. Other characters include her incest-oriented virgin daughter, her gay teen son and her bisexual stud boyfriend who manages to run through her, her son and her daughter before he's through with the family.'Die Mommie Die' has all the makings of a nifty little satire in the style of John Waters. Alas, Busch, who is clearly in the bush leagues when it comes to film-making, spends so much time trying to be arch that he forgets to be funny. The story, which is a cross between 'Mommie Dearest' and 'What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?,' is rife with campy possibilities, but the film never catches fire, maintaining far too subdued and restrained a tone for this kind of material. Under Mark Rucker's lagging direction, the pacing turns deadly, with the jokes coming a full beat and a half behind where they ought to. Moreover, the deliberately stilted writing and acting are too cute by half, calling so much attention to themselves that they wind up diluting their effectiveness in the process. It's a shame that what should have been a rollicking, manic good time at the movies turns instead into a funereal misfire. Rarely have ninety minutes passed so slowly.

In spite of all the references to various Hollywood "women's films," I thought that the most inspired in-joke was having Angela (Charles Busch) and Lance (StarkSands) speak to each other in a secret language, much to the annoyance ofEdith (Natasha Lyonne). Lyonne fans will recall that her character in SLUMSOF BEVERLY HILLS had a secret language that she shared with MarisaTomei's character.Overall, I thought this was an okay film. As a fan of the kinds of films that provided the inspiration, I enjoyed the various in-jokes and references. However, I felt that the cinematography could have been more stylized, withdeeply saturated colors. Oddly enough, a deleted scene that appears on theDVD looks more like a 1950s Technicolor melodrama than the film itself. As for Charles Busch, he looked too much like a man in drag for my tastes. While his masculine appearance did add to the humor (particularly when anothercharacter commented on Angela's beauty), at the same time, I found itdistracting, especially in his close-ups. Perhaps the cinematographer couldhave used soft-focus for the close-ups, thus mimicking the techniques of those who photographed all those aging actress horror films of the 1960s, not tomention the Lucille Ball version of MAME.In any event, this was a fun film for those who understand the genre, although I would not go so far as to call it a classic, camp or otherwise.