Film / Drop Dead Gorgeous

Drop Dead Gorgeous is a 1999 Black Comedy Mockumentary about a small town beauty pageant in Minnesota and the murders surrounding it. In much the same vein of Black Comedy as Heathers.

Not to be confused with the trope of the same name.

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This film provides examples of:

• The Ace: Tammy Curry has a reputation for excelling at everything she does (track, soccer, and the gun club), is an early favorite to win the beauty pageant, and is one of the only girls who is looking beyond the pageant when she enters it, being intrigued by the scholarship offers.
• Adam Westing: Adam West kicks off the first scene playing a smarmy version of himself as the host of a past pagaent.
• Alliterative Name: Amber Atkins, Annette Atkins, Lars Larson, Lester Leeman, etc.
• An Aesop: Subverted by the characters themselves.
  Loretta: You stop right there. You are a good person. Good things happen to good people.
  Amber: Really?
  Loretta: No. It's pure bullshit, sweetie. You're lucky as hell, so you might as well enjoy it.
• American Accents: The Minnesota/Northern Plains accent is very prevalent, helping to play up the smalltown atmosphere.
• And Another Thing...: Gladys, regarding Lester, as she is being hauled off by the police.
  "He sells reproductions! His furniture's as fake as my orgasms!"
• Annoying Laugh: Lisa's laugh is long, polyphonic, and full of snorts.
• Anvil on Head: Jenelle goes deaf after a light is dropped on her during rehearsal.
• An Arm and a Leg: Amber's mother Annette loses her right hand when her trailer catches fire and her hand is basically melted onto a can of beer she was drinking at the time, forcing it to be amputated.
• Bad "Bad Acting": Former pageant winner Connie Rudrud shilling for Saint Paul Pork Products.

• Beauty Contest: Most of the film is presented as a documentary on a local beauty pageant.
• Betty and Veronica: Amber vs. Becky over Brett. It doesn't end well.
• Big-Breast Pride: The Minnesota American Teen Princess contestant from Burnsville.
• Bilingual Bonus: The first time we meet Molly's adoptive family, the Howards, their daughter's dialogue in Japanese is not translated. She says: "Dad, Mom, when are we going back to Tokyo? I hate it here; they put butter on EVERYTHING!"

• Blatant Lies: The police, after some thorough investigating, find that all of the deaths are just accidents that happened through very convenient coincidences and are totally not deliberate murders.

• Becky pretends to be good friends with Mary Johansen, even though Mary has no idea who she is and says so right on camera.

• Chekhov's Skill: The first scene at the Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club has Becky not aiming for the center of the human-shaped target, but rather, for the area right above the target's right eye. Cue the morgue, and Amber pulls back the cloth to reveal...
• The Chew Toy: Tess, quite literally at one point, when she mentions her last dog mauled her. She also hits her crotch, had a bolt from a plane hit her in the head, and blows chunks during the pageant.
• Contrived Coincidence: Everybody at the Minnesota State Finals getting food poisoning, except for Amber, leading to a Disqualification-Induced Victory.
• Crapsack World: Mount Rose, Minnesota to be exact.
• Creator Cameo: Judge #3 is writer and producer Lona Williams.
• The Coroner Doth Protest Too Much: The murders are ruled as accidents. No one is fooled.

• Deadpan Snarker: Loretta has many snarky and hilarious one-liners.
• Dirty Old Man: John Dough, one of the judges.
• Disappeared Dad: Amber's father.
  Amber: What did Ma always use to say?
  Loretta: Once a carnie, always a carnie.
• Disqualification-Induced Victory: Basically the reason Amber wins the Minnesota State Finals, as every other girl gets food poisoning from the shellfish.
• Distracted by the Sexy: During an interview, Gladys stops talking to begin ogling a high school wrestler and becomes flustered.
  • Leslie stops her interview to make out with her boyfriend.
  • John Dough during many moments.
• Does This Remind You of Anything?: Tammy's rides on her dad's thresher.
  "But I know for a fact Tammy only smoked after a good drive."
  • And Leslie's running her hand up the Washington Monument replica on her head during the opening number of the pageant.
• Dope Slap: Harold and Hank exchange a few.
• Dumb Blonde: Leslie. Arguably Annette, although she's more Book Dumb.
• Eagleland: Parodied with Gladys' uncreative ideas for pageant themes.
• Earn Your Happy Ending: Amber's idol is Diane Sawyer, and she dreams of getting out of Mount Rose and becoming a big-name news anchor herself. As has become a pattern for her, a wise decision and dumb luck converge to give her a job as an anchor for a Twin Cities news station.

• Everybody Smokes: Including a pharmacist, a pregnant teenager, the entire fire department, and people in a hospital.

• Fake Orgasm: Referenced. As she's being arrested, Gladys claims that the orgasms she had with her husband were all as fake as the furniture he sells.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: Becky complains that the swan float reeks of gas.
• The Fool: Through circumstances worthy of a voodoo protection spell, Amber bumbles into lucky breaks and close-calls that allow her to achieve her dreams, and she never stops being an absolute sweetheart about it.
• Foreshadowing: "Jesus loves winners." And Becky is very intent on winning.
  • The state pageant. The suddenly changed schedule (with no stay at the Hotel Howard Johnson) and maybe the improperly cooked seafood hint that Sarah Rose Cosmetics is having financial problems. Amber and the other contestants who reach the National level later discover that Sarah Rose has been shut down due to a long history of tax evasion.
• Fluffy Fashion Feathers: There is a cape trimmed with white feathers, and a dress with a white feather neckline.
• Follow in My Footsteps: Averted. Annette fears that Amber will turn out just like her and end up spending her entire life in Mount Rose.
• Foreign Culture Fetish: Molly has one for Japanese culture; her Japanese-born adoptive parents have one for American culture.
• Freak Out: All contestants of the national American Teen Princess Pageant (save for Amber) go through this when they find out the company has been shut down.
• The Fundamentalist: Downplayed, but still present. While no one character is particularly fundamentalist, we do see that the town's Lutherans are very outspoken about how much more moral and traditional they are than the "sin cities." Then all the murders start happening.
• Funny Background Event:
  • Hank goofing off behind his brother, and Leslie making out with her boyfriend behind Amber.
  • At the parade after the swan explodes, one man stands up in the bleachers and applauds like he thinks it was intended as part of the show.
• Generation Xerox: Gladys hopes for one with Becky winning the Mount Rose pageant, as she did before her.

• Gilligan Cut: Amber's hesitant, uncertain naming and spelling all the United States in alphabetical order cuts from a tentative "Arizona?" to Amber confidently naming and spelling West Virginia.
• Girly Girl with a Tomboy Streak: Becky is a prissy and fashionable rich girl, but she also asks Brett if he wants to go cow-tipping.
• Godwin's Law: When Amber is told her outfit is too skimpy for the pageant, she says "This is... This is Nazi Germany".
• Groin Attack: A rare female example occurs during dance practice. Poor, poor Tess...

• Halfway Plot Switch: The first half of the movie is build-up to the pageant. Then the pageant happens...and there's still a half hour of film left.
• Happily Adopted: Molly, but to the detriment of their biological daughter, who's practically ignored.
• The Hilarity of Hats: Each pageant contestant wears an elaborate, personality-reflecting headpiece for the "Proud to Be An American" opening number:
  • Amber's headpiece features a map of the continental U.S. in blue and red, with Minnesota highlighted in gold glitter.
  • Becky's headpiece features her face as a new addition to Mount Rushmore.
  • Leslie's headpiece features the Washington Monument.
  • Lisa's headpiece features the Statue of Liberty.
  • Molly's headpiece features an atomic blast.
  • Michelle's headpiece features the Hollywood Hills.
  • Tess's headpiece features the world's largest ball of twine, created by her uncle.
• Hollywood Tone-Deaf: Averted - Becky doesn't screech or slide tones randomly, she's just awful at singing.
• Honest John's Dealership: Lester Leeman is a sleazy furniture salesman.
• I Was Quite a Looker: Iona Hildebrandt is a large framed and very masculine cranky woman with mediocre looks, but she won the crown in 1945. With pictures showing off what a classic,mid-century beauty she used to be.
• Informed Ability: Lampshaded. Becky's dance is depicted as genuinely awful (on top of the performance itself being extremely tasteless), despite Gladys' efforts to play up its quality.
• Innocent Inaccurate: Tess: "Spike, my German shepherd, he went to live with a nice family on a farm after he attacked me..."
• Karma Houdini: The smarmy and probably corrupt cops and corrupt pageant judge John Dough (a possible ephebophile) don't really get any comeuppance.

• Loophole Abuse: After Amber's costume for the talent section of the show is stolen, Gladys attempts to prevent Amber competing even with a new costume on the grounds that all costumes have to be pre-approved a week in advance even when Amber's wearing a simple black leotard that shouldn't be "offensive" to anyone. Lisa provides another loophole by giving Amber her costume, reasoning that her costume was approved previously and she was never going to win the contest anyway while Amber has a better shot.
• Lovable Sex Maniac: Loretta, who tries flirting with a married man at the hotel bar, only to notice his wedding ring. She immediately starts flirting with the bartender instead.
• Love Makes You Crazy: Becky doesn't take it too well when Brett shows an obvious attraction to Amber... so he ends up with a bullet in his head.
• Miss Exposition: The cutaway to Iona Hildebrandt, who helpfully explains what lutefisk is.
• Mockumentary: With a few exceptions the whole movie is shown as a documentary about the beauty contest.
• National Stereotypes: The Howards, despite doing everything they can to naturalise themselves to Minnesota, are one Japanese stereotype after another. The only reason there was such close up footage of Becky's float exploding is because the dad can't put down the video camera.
• Nice Girl:
  • Amber is arguably the nicest girl in the movie with a wholesome demeanor and down to earth attitude.
  • Lisa also qualifies, dropping out of the pageant so she can give Amber her costume so she can compete. Leslie, Tess, Jenelle, Michelle, and Molly also seem like very sweet girls, if not more than a bit dim.
• Nice Job Fixing It, Villain:
  • Nice job blowing up your own daughter due to your own carelessness and crimes, Mom!
  • Gladys's attempt at revenge against Amber inadvertently leads to Amber getting her dream job.
• Odd Friendship: A couple of lines suggest that Amber, a tap dancer and beautician at the mortuary, is friends with athlete and Gun Nut Tammy Curry. For that matter, with the exception of Becky, all of the girls in the pageant seem to get along well with each other despite their differing personalities and interests. It's justified when one considers how Mount Rose is such a small town and most of the girls grew up together — either they all get along or they be socially ostracized.
• Oh, Crap!:
  • Becky, just before she gets blown up.
  • Amber, realizing that the other Minnesota American Teen Princess contestants have much stronger talents than she does.
• Only Sane Woman:
  • Amber isn't as dorky, awkward, dumb, or as backstabbing as the other contestants. This is made all the more obvious when she gets to Nationals, and the contestants find out that Sarah Rose has been shut down and the pageant has been canceled. The other girls riot and destroy the building, while Amber simply sighs and gets back on the bus.
  • Loretta is this for the adults.
• Parental Substitute: After the Atkins trailer blows up and Annette is hospitalized, Loretta steps in to help prepare Amber for the pageant.
• Pick on Someone Your Own Size: Gladys Leeman eventually develops a major hate-on for the teenage Amber Atkins, her daughter's main rival in the pageant.
• Pinball Protagonist: Amber basically wins by having a great deal of luck and being in the right place at the right time, ranging from switching places with another girl and inadvertently avoiding a sabotaging accident to being able to swap costumes with another contestant after her own is lost.
• Police Are Useless: The cops don't see anything suspicious about the various deaths.
• Politically Incorrect Villain:
  • He's not quite villainous- that's his wife- but Lester Leeman is pretty sexist, and throws out racist remarks against Jews, Mexicans, and black people in most of his appearances.
  • Not that his wife is any better; her blithe comments about feminists, Catholics, and the handicapped count.
• Pretty Little Headshots: How Brett is killed.
• Pun-Based Title: Murders surrounding a beauty pageant!
• Punny Name: John Dough sounds like John Doe.

• Removing the Rival: Being Becky's only real competition after Tammy's death, the entire pageant is so blatantly rigged against Amber, it Crosses the Line Twice. After the murder attempt fails, her interview is made ten times harder than the other contestants' (she's forced to spell out all fifty states — in alphabetical order), then during rehearsal a stage light is rigged to fall on her (luckily for her, she switched order placement with Jenelle at the last minute), and then her talent costume is stolen the night of the pageant and Gladys refuses to approve the new one she gets from the choreographer. When all that fails, it's implied that Gladys bribed the judges to get a higher score for Becky.
• Rich Bitch: Gladys and Becky, the Leemans being the richest family in Mount Rose. It's implied that Gladys has bought the police off to literally get away with murder.
• Running Gag:
  • Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club, Lutheran orphanages, the world's oldest living Lutheran, and so on.
  • "Are we on COPS?"
• Sanity Slippage: Gladys wasn't all there to begin with, considering she murdered Tammy and tried to murder Amber so Becky could win the pageant, but after Becky dies, she loses it.
• Second Place Is for Winners: The contest is so blatantly rigged in Becky's favor that even Dumb Blond Leslie seems to grasp this. Consequently, when Leslie thinks that she came in second (she's actually the second runner-up, aka third) she's perfectly happy to have placed that high.
• Shout-Out: The song over the closing credits is Joan Jett's cover of the theme to The Mary Tyler Moore Show, which was also about a sweet-natured, wide-eyed Minnesota girl aspiring to make it in TV news.
• Shrinking Violet: Tess is a nervous girl who rarely smiles.
• Sir Swears-a-Lot: The Mayor's first appearance.
  Oh, yeah, sure, Freda, sure. She was the oldest living Lutheran, now she's dead as a doornail. It's the damn Shriners who won't take down the goddamn sign, the lazy sons of bitches. Every year, every damn year, I tell 'em, "Take down the goddamn Freda sign, you lazy sons of bitches!"
• Small Town Boredom: Amber. Really, though, almost everyone hates living in Mount Rose.
• Spoof Aesop: The preacher's eulogy for Becky that the lesson of all this is "Buy American," after a Mexican-made parade float exploded.
• Stage Mom: Gladys is blatantly this for Becky, clearly determined that her daughter get the opportunity to compete that she never did.
• Stepford Smiler: Gladys and Becky. The unstable kind.
• Stylistic Suck: All over the place. The St. Paul Pork Products Ad, Soylent Green, Becky's cringe-fest of a routine... and that's just skimming the surface.
• Suspiciously Specific Denial: John Dough does this all the time.
• Teenage Pregnancy:
  • Implied with Leslie.
  • Girls compete in the pageant at the age of 17. Gladys won Mount Rose Miss American Teen Princess 17 years ago, and her daughter is now 17.
  • One of the girls smoking and drinking while being interviewed in the high school bathroom is heavily pregnant.
• Terrible Interviewees Montage: The judges' interviews before the pageant.
  Harold: If you could be any kind of tree in the woods, what kind of tree would you be?
  Tess: Dogwood.
  Molly: Bonsai.
  Leslie: Green?
• Trashy Trailer Home: Amber and her single alcoholic mother live in a trailer.
• Tomboy with a Girly Streak: Tammy is a varsity soccer player and track runner, the president of a gun club, smokes, and enjoys driving her father's thresher. She's also competing in a beauty pageant and is a favorite to win.
• Trade Snark: Sarah Rose Cosmetics ®©™
• The Cassandra: The two Goth girls in the school bathroom tell the documentary crew that Tammy's death indicates that more girls will get killed off. Though none of the other girls in the pageant end up dying (unless you count Becky) one girl is severely injured, another has her home destroyed and her mother hospitalized, and a guy their age dies as collateral damage.
• The Unfavorite:
  • Lisa is implied to be this in her family.
  • Molly's Japanese sister is ignored and insulted by their parents.
• Vicariously Ambitious: It's blatantly obvious that Gladys is trying to relive her Glory Days through Becky, including following her to state, something Gladys never got to do despite winning her own pageant (most likely due to being pregnant with Becky). The goth girls in the bathroom even lampshade it at one point.
• Villainous Breakdown: Gladys has one after Becky's death.
• The Voiceless: We never see judge #3, Jean Kangas, say a single word.
• Vomit Indiscretion Shot: Done over and over and over, to Also sprach Zarathustra.
• Yandere: Becky. Boy, she sure doesn't want her boyfriend to look at anyone else...
• "Where Are They Now?" Epilogue: After the pageant as a whole is cancelled, Leslie is shown attending the Chaska School of Beauty while working as an exotic dancer to pay the bills, Harold Vilmes died of lyme disease from a deer tick bite and left Hank the store, Gladys placed second in a state-wide prison beauty pageant and broke out to get revenge on Amber, and when Amber took over a live news broadcast after the original reporter was hit by a stray bullet, she ends up getting the reporting job she always wanted.

• Wide-Eyed Idealist:
  • A candystriper at the hospital. No one takes it well.
  • Tess. See Innocent Inaccurate.
• You Should Have Died Instead: After Becky dies, Gladys has a breakdown and shouts this at Amber. Part of it is out of hate and grief, but the rest is implied to be because Amber was supposed to win the contest and Gladys bribed the judges so Becky could win instead.

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