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Die, Mommie, Die!
2003 - R - 90 Mins.
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| Director: Mark Rucker | | Producer: Dante DiLoreto | | Written By: Charles Busch | | Starring: Charles Busch, Jason Priestley, Frances Conroy, Natascha Lyonne, Stark Sands |
| Review by: Harrison Cheung |
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Mommie and her boytoy driving no where near 90210
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Last year's film festival favorite and the winner of a special Sundance Jury Prize for Best Actor for Charles Busch, 'Die, Mommie, Die!' is a funny movie that works as a throwback to those femme fatale movies of the 1930s and 1940s. If you’ve ever seen a Bette Davis or Joan Crawford movie when they were in their prime, you’ll get what kind of movie 'Die, Mommie, Die!' lovingly spoofs and recreates.
There’s another twist to this movie. The star is Charles Busch, a well-known gay writer and drag queen. Set in the 1960s, Busch is Angela Arden, a singing star of yesteryear with a troubled past, who is faced with the distinct possibility that she's washed up and is a has-been, as several conspiracies of murder swirl throughout her household.
Angela's husband is a mean-spirited old movie producer who has cut off her credit cards after his private eye discovers her sordid affair with local gigolo, Tony (Jason Priestley of "90210" fame). Her teenage daughter, Eddie (Natasha Lyonne) hates her while her gay teenage son, Lance (Stark Sands) adores her. Amid this dysfunctional Hollywood family, we have a prying maid, Bootsie played by Frances Conroy ('Six Feet Under').
It’s a complex plot loaded with twists and surprises as Angela hopes to re-engineer a career comeback. And most of the time, 'Die, Mommie, Die!' works wonderfully as both camp entertainment and a straightforward drama. In fact, if a woman had played the lead, you would still have an intriguing retro film. Unfortunately, because the film is based on Busch's play, he dominates the screen and doesn’t look too convincing in drag. There are some painful "intimate" moments when you’re all too aware that Angela Arden is being played by a guy with quick cuts to a body double. The music numbers go on far too long – at least beyond Busch's ability to lipsync. But the cast is great and the dialogue is rich, spicy and sexy.
Jason Priestley plays lounge lizard very well. Priestley, who seems happy to live in the indie world in his post-TV career, has a number of brave scenes that take calculated aim at his own celebrity when he was the center of plenty of tabloid rumors. As the nosy gigolo, he seems to have no morals or ethics as he seduces most of the Arden family while he digs for clues about the growing number of murders in the Arden household. Lyonne's Eddie is picture perfect as the tantrum-throwing teenager who's a little too friendly with her daddy while Sands is very funny and appealing as the bitchy son who develops a fondness for his mother’s toys.
There's a lot of nudity in this movie but it's all done for laughs. We wouldn’t be having this kind of explicitness in an old Bette Davis movie so it's part of "Die, Mommie, Die!"'s raunchy appeal. With homages to many films – including the grand finale practically lifted from 'Sunset Boulevard' – ‘'Die, Mommie, Die!' is a fun movie-lover's film. They don’t make them like that anymore. And with a drag queen in the starring role, they still don’t but this is a pretty good facsimile.
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