Review

Lovers of white-trash camp should drop your corn dogs and get this raucous comedy. Like a trailer-trash soap opera on speed, Sordid Lives centers on the extended family of Texas rednecks who’ve come together for the funeral of their adulterous matriarch. There’s Peggy, the randy gal accidentally killed when she tripped over the wooden legs of the married G.W. (Bridges); her ever-squabbling big-haired daughters LaVonda (Walker) and Latrelle (Bedelia); G.W.’s wife, the revengeful neighbor Noleta (Burke); and Peggy’s sister Sissy (Grant), who picked the wrong time to quit smoking.

Rounding out the cast of family members is brother Earl (Jordan), a Tammy Wynette-obsessed drag queen who’s spent 23 years in a mental institution fighting "a severe case of homosexuality with a demonic side of transvestism"; the hunky Ty (Geiger), Latrelle’s estranged gay son; and Bitsy Mae (Newton-John), a guitar-strumming, country music-singing ex-con whose had her own illicit affair with the deceased. Some take the news of Peggy’s death with a shrug and a piece of pecan pie, while others turn into Thelma and Louise and turn a bar full of men into lace bra-wearing sluts.

The dialogue is snappy and often times fall-out-of-your seats funny. The tantrums, gossips, revelations, breakouts and coming outs spill all over the linoleum floor in this film that deliriously revels in its look at chitin-loving, beer-guzzling, gun-totting, same sex-loving, pill-popping eccentrics.

 -- Lawrence Ferber