Drop Dead Gorgeous

The bulimic and bisexual aspirant model Cynthia (Ivy Levan) is selected by the famous fashion designer Claudio Vestiges (Steven Berkoff) to be the star of the most expensive fashion campaign ever made. An independent crew prepares a documentary about her, the new look in the world of fashion. However Cynthia has an overdose and dies, but Claudio decides to keep her face in the campaign paying a little fortune per day and her agent Robert Baker (Jeremy London) prepares a contract to be signed by her mother. Along the photo shoot, the photographer and his crew have problems with the corpse and the model Brooke (Dawn Olivieri) gives up to participate,.Now the only change to make it work is the addicted and abused model Sabrina (Arielle Vandenberg).

I do not know how or why I saw "Drop Dead Gorgeous" to the very end. I made a mistake and thought this flick was the 1999, with the same title. "Drop Dead Gorgeous" (2010) sucks and is overrated, even with the IMDb User Rating of 2.7; surprisingly there are favorable reviews. This movie is neither funny nor a good critic to the world of fashion. After almost 93 minutes running time, I did not laugh not even once. My vote is one (awful).

Title (Brazil): "Lindas de Morrer" ("Deadly Gorgeous")

I think the reason this movie has such a low rating (and some bad reviews) is that it suffers from an *extreme* version of the discrepancy between the actual movie and the movie that is advertised. To look at the poster you'd imagine you're in for some sort of "Weekend at Bernie's Fashion Week" or "Zoolander 2: Derelicte meets Dead". The movie is good, but it's nothing like that.

The movie is a genuine black comedy. I'm a guy who likes his comedies laugh out loud (think "There's Something About Mary"), and this is not that type of comedy. It's amusing, but there's nothing especially laugh-worthy in it. This is, rather, absurdist comedy, the sort of thing you watch because you can't believe anyone would think that way and you want to see how much more awfully they will behave.

A movie that criticizes the fashion industry is not especially daring; what makes this one work is that the satire is so well-structured and, simultaneously, over-the-top but also completely organic. You don't see ham-handed rants against capitalism, modeling agencies and the rest (except for one rather ham-handed sequence against documentary film-makers); rather what you see is an oddly compelling story that just happens to show terrible things along the way.

One final reason to watch: the model star of the show, Cynthia, played by Ivy Levan, looks insanely like Jennifer Lawrence throughout the entire movie. It's uncanny, and I don't know to what extent it's deliberate, but adds well to the whole air of "reality but unreality" of the piece.

It carries the skinny, emaciated look of fashion models to its logical conclusion, that if corpse- look models are what the fashion industry wants, then corpse models should be even better. After having gone to that length, the comedy becomes even cruder, as all of the people involved have to deal with the physical problems of working a fashion shoot with a stiff, literally. The cast is over-the-top and the script so utterly far out there that it is totally hilarious.The mockumentary crucifies the empty imbecility of the very reason for the fashion industry, women trying to make themselves more appealing to men. This is a film for everyone who has looked at a fashion runway show and wondered, why anyone would ever wear THAT? Fans of Absolutely Fabulous will love this movie!

I like the other reviews I read, and I have to agree; this movie is quite entertaining! I like "dark" comedies and this one really fills the bill. I know this movie has the same title as one made a few years ago, but I understand that there are many, many movies that fall into this category. I don't think it can be helped, there are so many movies and so many titles, but this title is perfect for the script of this movie. I have never seen the earlier version of "Drop Dead Gorgeous" but I plan to see it, if for no other reason than to compare the two. I really like this version though. I especially liked the lead actress (Ivy Levan), who gets very little fanfare; I think she did a GREAT job in this movie, I hope to see her in more and more movies in the future, she's great.

Sadly, the one 'professional' review of this film has been done by someone who seems more interested in showing us he knows gossip about Jeremy London. Am I expecting too much from a review site that exists primarily to tell you where you can see naked celebrity bodies? That was rhetorical. I, however, am more interested in the illustrious cast member who he has not recognised (surely more important for a reviewer?). Steven Berkoff has a long filmography and is one of the greats of the English theatre. He is wonderful in the film and is an amalgamation of every idea you have had about diva designers.

This is a black comedy and the premise is marvellous. Yes it is done on a shoestring and cleverly. Yes there is some over the top humour, but there is wit and depth here too. And the director shares his inside knowledge of the inanities of the modelling game. If you love America's Next Top Model for humorous reasons (and please tell me you do!) then you will enjoy this.