Word: moms
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...thought of taking action, but my mom dissuaded me because everything worked out all right in the end," Martin says...
TITLE: THE POSITIVELY TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE ALLEGED TEXAS CHEERLEADER- MURDERIN G MOM...
...Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom -- a new, rather too strenuously titled HBO film -- is intended to be a spoof of TV's ubiquitous true-crime movies. The joke is that it's more believable than most of the ripped-from-the-headlines docudramas it pokes fun at. Director Michael Ritchie (Smile, The Candidate) and screenwriter Jane Anderson (The Baby Dance) don't lampoon the genre; they merely strip it of the solemn sensationalism that TV usually lavishes on these seedy tales. What's left is acid black comedy...
...film re-creates not only the bizarre case (already the subject for one TV movie this season) but also the media frenzy that surrounded it. TV reporters try to sweet-talk their way into the principals' homes. Friends and relatives battle over selling their stories to Hollywood. "Mom, when they make the movie, can I play myself?" asks Wanda's daughter as if she were seeking a lift to the mall. Layers pile on layers: we watch as Wanda watches herself on Donahue and A Current Affair; the film's producer and writer appear as themselves; and the entire story...
...film is more than just a clever satire of media overkill. Ritchie assembles a vivid, sharply drawn gallery of small-town characters: Beau Bridges as Wanda's unwilling co-conspirator, a hardhat burdened with a messy past and a loony wife (Swoosie Kurtz); Elizabeth Ruscio as the rival mom, no less competitive but not as imaginative; and Matt Frewer as Wanda's drudge of a lawyer. All that and a bouncy country score by Lucy Simon too. True or not, it's positively terrific...