#171: Strangers with Candy

Release Date: June 28th, 2006

Format: Streaming (Tubi)

Written by: Stephen Colbert, Paul Dinello, and Amy Sedaris

Directed by: Paul Dinello

3.5 Stars

Strangers with Candy is about Jerri Blank, a 46-year-old ex-junkie who is released from the ol’ grey bar hotel and returns home to find that her mother has died, her father is remarried and in a coma, and that her childhood home is now occupied by her stepmother, her stepmother’s boyfriend, and a high school-age half-brother. 

On her first night back, Jerri is told by her father’s doctor that Jerri’s very presence might just be the solution to his comatose state, that if she can elicit feelings of a time in her father’s life when things were good and precious, back when she was his little girl, maybe he’ll awaken.

Jerri responds enthusiastically, “That’s it! I’m picking my life up exactly where I left off! I’m gonna go back to high school and be the good girl that I never was or had any desire to be! Maybe that will help save my daddy!”

With that, Strangers with Candy is off to the races.  

It’s an irreverent and funny (very funny) comedy based on the cult classic Comedy Central series from the late ‘90s, and I think it’s a comedy masterpiece. 

It’s absolutely relentless in its pursuit of laughs. The script is brilliant. There is clever wordplay, physical humor, visual gags, gross out jokes, sharp satire, incredible performances, and fully-rounded characters. Here is a script, written by brilliant comic actors, in which almost everybody is an idiot. The tone is consistent and funny and very, very silly.  

When Jerri shows up to her high school science class on her first day back at school, and hands her science teacher, Mr. Noblet, a note from the office, he reads it stoically, and then balls it up and furiously throws it at the wall yelling, “God, damn it!!” He composes himself and dejectedly announces to the class, “Well, we have a new student, Jerri Blank. Okay Mr. Blank, why don’t you tell us something about yourself.”

Jerri stands before the class and nervously says, “Oh, alright. Well, hello, I’m Jerri Blank and I’m an alcoholic. I’m also addicted to amphetamines, as well as mainline narcotics. Some people say I have a sex addiction, but I think all those years of prostitution was just a means to feed my ravenous hunger for heroin. It’s kinda like the chicken or the nugget. The point is, I’m addicted to gambling. Thank you.” Then, meekly, “Oh, and my daddy is in a coma.”     

This all happens in the first ten minutes of the movie.

The rest of the film follows Jerri as she navigates the treacherous terrain of high school social life: She has a crush on a dumb high school jock; she befriends a good girl who she wants to use for sex; she learns that the aforementioned Mr. Noblet, a reformed Christian, is having a secret affair with her art teacher, Geoffrey Jellineck; her high school principal, Mr. Blackman, is stealing public funds and must rig the school science fair to win a cash prize; and all of this occurs against the backdrop of her inner struggle to resist doing drugs and stabbing people and lashing out verbally at almost any perceived slight.

Nothing is sacred here. People are petty and dumb and nothing is learned.

In the wise words of Jerri Blank, “You can be rich in family, or friends, or love; but the only thing that matters is being rich in money.”