The Opposite of sex

Christina Ricci Does wonderful in this movie

Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Info

Screenwriter Don Roos made his directorial debut with this oddball sex comedy. The tale is narrated by 16-year-old Louisiana tramp Dedee Truitt (Christina Ricci), who buries her stepfather and then heads for Indiana to visit her homosexual half-brother Bill (Martin Donovan). Recovering from the AIDS death of longtime companion Tom, schoolteacher Bill has linked up with a new partner, handsome Matt (Ivan Sergei). After Dedee seduces Matt and claims she's pregnant by him, the couple steals $10,000 from Bill's safety deposit box and heads for L.A. Alarmed by Matt's seeming disappearance and hoping to blackmail Bill into disclosing Matt's whereabouts, Bill's former student (also Matt's former beau) Jason (Johnny Galecki) accuses Bill of molestation four years previous, a charge that jeopardizes Bill's job as a schoolteacher. To clear his name, Bill, and Tom's sister Lucia (Lisa Kudrow), leave for L.A. to locate Matt and Dedee. Lucia is a repressed old maid who flinches from even the thought of sex, but even so, weird Sheriff Tippett (Lyle Lovett) takes a fancy to her. Meanwhile, questions are raised about the true father of Dedee's baby, and the film comes to a climax with a shooting, a cross-county chase, and the inevitable showdown between the quirky characters. Shown at the 1998 Sundance Film Festival. ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi

Robert Ebert

"The Opposite of Sex" is like a movie with the "Mystery Science Theater 3000" commentary built right in. It comments on itself, with the heroine as narrator. DeDee Truitt, a trash-talking teenager from Arkansas, chats on the soundtrack during and between many of the scenes, pointing out the cliches, warning us about approaching plot conventions and debunking our desire to see the story unfold in traditional ways.

Watching the movie is like sitting through a film in front of a row of wisecracking cult movie fans. It's also sometimes very funny. DeDee (the name may relate to her bra size) is played by Christina Ricci, who is having a very good year, and has left all memories of "The Addams Family" far behind with roles in movies like "The Ice Storm" and "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." Here she shows a cocky, smart-aleck side. She's the kind of actress who makes an audience sit up and take notice, because she lets us know she's capable of breaking a movie wide open.

In "The Opposite of Sex," her 16-year-old character DeDee bails out from an unhappy home life in Louisiana and makes her way to Indiana, where an older half-brother named Bill (Martin Donovan) teaches high school. Bill is gay, and until recently lived with a stockbroker named Tom, who died of AIDS and left him all his money. Now he lives with a younger man named Matt (Ivan Sergei) and gets frequent visits from Lucia (Lisa Kudrow), who was Tom's sister.

It's a good thing we have DeDee to explain all of this to us, usually in cynical terms. DeDee is advanced sexually, if not intellectually, and soon sets about trying to persuade Matt that he is not really gay at all, but has just been killing time while waiting for DeDee to come along. She has a good reason for snaring Matt: She got pregnant in Louisiana and is recruiting a partner.

DeDee and her brother Bill have obviously had quite different childhoods. Bill is quiet, civilized, accepting. When he finds a student writing a crude graffito about him on the wall of the high school men's room, he suggests grammatical improvements. DeDee is loud, brash and in your face--a hellion whose master plan includes seducing Matt and stealing $10,000 from Bill so she and Matt can flee to Los Angeles, for the good of "their" baby.

Meanwhile, an obnoxious dropout named Jason (Johnny Galecki, from "Roseanne") claims Bill has molested him. It's a blackmail scheme, but the sheriff (Lyle Lovett) has to investigate anyway, even though he more or less sees through Jason. Working behind the scenes, Lucia, the Kudrow character, wonders if maybe Bill would like to live with her, in whatever arrangement might seem to work. The sheriff likes Lucia in his earnest and plodding way, but she can't really focus on him.

In its plot outlines, "The Opposite of Sex" is an R-rated sitcom. But first-time director Don Roos(who wrote "Single White Female" and "Boys on the Side") redeems it with DeDee's narration. When a gun turns up on the screen, DeDee tells us: "This is foreshadowing. Duh!" She likes to tell us she knows what we're thinking, and we're wrong.

The approach is refreshing. Most movies are profoundly conservative at the level of plot construction, no matter how offbeat their material may be. They believe that all audiences demand happy endings, and want to be led lockstep through traditional plot construction. When you've seen enough movies, alas, you can sense the gears laboriously turning, and you know with a sinking heart that there will be no surprises. The DeDee character subverts those expectations; she shoots the legs out from under the movie with perfectly timed zingers. I hate people who talk during movies, but if she were sitting behind me in the theater, saying all of this stuff, I'd want her to keep right on talking.

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Cadaverella

Cinderella is a bit drugged up version
Rotten Tomatoes

Movie Info

The familiar Cinderella fable gets a grim twist in director Timothy Friend's tale of a murderous corpse who only has until midnight to avenge her untimely death. Cinder is an unfortunate soul whose mother is a vicious stripper and whose grandmother is a voodoo goddess. When Cinder is killed and presented the opportunity to strike back from beyond the grave, she is give until the stroke of midnight to unleash her undead wrath. ~ 

Killer Review

Summary: Cinder has troubles. She has a wicked step-stripper for a mom. Her prince charming is acomplete psycho. Her fairy godmother is actually a voodoo god. And worst of all she`s been murdered. But Cinder doesn`t intend to let a little thing like being dead stop her. She has places to go and people to kill. And she only has until midnight.

Horror Society

Review by BigBadWolfBoy

Okay, I’ll admit it. I popped Cadaverella into my DVD player wanting and expecting a sluttier, gorier retelling of the classic Cinderella story. And while I definitely got what I wanted and expected, part of the fun of this 2007 tarnished gem from director Timothy Friend is that the Cinderalla parallels aren’t as blatantly obvious as you’d think. This movie is a creation unto itself, and while it drags in parts and clunks its way through some uneven acting and editing, overall it’s smarter and more interesting than a good deal of what jets out of the indie horror fire hydrant these days.

Cinder is a smart young lass (at one point reading a book called Young Nietzsche!) whose wealthy, loving pap gets hitched to a stripper with two glowering, silent, black-wigged moppets in tow. He promptly keels over on the night of his honeymoon when the sultry moves of his new wife prove to be too taxing for his greasy cheeseburger-ed heart. Alas our lass is now left in the hands of stepmom Donna until she turns twenty-one, at which point she will inherit her father’s money and high-tail it someplace a little more tropical.

This is all told in flashback. The movie starts with Cinder (well played by Megan Goddard) already lamenting her own murder, and the story she tells about how she ended up dead is what Cadaverella is all about.

An interesting aspect of the film is that some of the leads play multiple characters. I don’t know if it was done on purpose or if it was a way to save money, but it actually works in the film’s favor. In the two most prominent examples, the dual characters played by their respective actors are polar opposites of each other, which I found fascinating.

In the first case actor Ryan Seymour plays both Cinder’s sweet, wheelchair-bound friend/wants-to-be-more-than-a-friend Justin, as well as gardener/psychotic-murdering-biker-boy Cash. Seymour gets to play both the guy who wants Cinder and the guy who Cinder wants in that crazy ‘I despise him so much I must bone him’ kinda way.

And the next example is Kieran Hunter. In reality she is also Jennifer Friend, co-writer and producer. In the movie she plays both evil stepmom Donna and harmless geek co-worker Lenore. One wants nothing more than for Cinder to be somewhat less alive than she insists on being, while the other wants only to follow Cinder around, be her buddy, and play for her Leonard Cohen songs. On an old-timey tape recorder. With a homemade tent sign that says ‘I heart Leonard’ sitting on top of it. As Lenore she’s adorable, and as Donna she affects this strange half-British/half-New Yorker accent that made me smile.

I liked the way the Cinderella touches are altered or buried. The stepsisters, for example, aren’t really evil. They’re creepy in the way they whisper to each other and NEVER AGE, but they seem more like otherworldly observers than anything else.

The Fairy Godmother has also been replaced with a voodoo priest named Baron Samedi (Santiago Vasquez), who arranges favors and guards the doorway to the Underworld. Once Cinder gets introduced to her brand new home in a shallow grave by some rocks, it’s the Baron that raises her and enables her to get all vengeful and such with her bare boobs and zombie-enhanced skull-crushing power and whatnot. It’s good fun.

Cadaverella surprised me with it’s humor. It also surprised me by holding back on the gore (save for a slapstick eyelid-ripping early on) until the last fifteen minutes or so when Zombie Cinder goes on her rampage. The strange thing is that I didn’t miss it. The movie has a strong enough story with interesting characters and a smart sense of humor, that I didn’t mind the lack of flesh ripping for a good chunk of running time.

Sure it’s a low, low budget affair with plenty of meandering scenes, awkward line-readings, editing that cries out for some serious tightening, dodgy digital effects, and an ending that just sort of sputters out. But it also has a love note comprised of Def Leppard lyrics. And it’s early Def Leppard, too! How cool is that?

If you’re looking for an offbeat horror/comedy/oddity, then Cadaverella might be just what the tophat-wearing, favor-granting Guardian of the Underwold ordered.

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