Strangers With Candy is based on the cult HBO classic of the same name. While this show might be foreign to many folks out there, the high profile cameos in the picture (Matthew Broderick, Sarah Jessica Parker, Allison Janney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, etc.) and the presence of the increasingly popular Stephen Colbert should lend a helpful measure of momentum. The film has actually been in the can for quite some time. In fact, I saw it a couple of years ago at Sundance, and yet it's just this weekend getting a wide release - Hollywood works in strange and mysterious ways.

I believe the Strangers With Candy web site gives the best description possible of this film's plot; "this prequel to the famed television series tells the tale of Jerri Blank (a hilarious Amy Sedaris), a forty-seven year old ex-con junkie-hooker who decides to return home after thirty two years of sewing her wild oats."

Yes, that about sums it up. Upon arriving home she is barely allowed into the house by her new step mommy (Deborah Rush) and is crushed to learn that her beloved father (Dan Hedeya) had slipped into a coma shortly after she ran away. Despondent over this, Jerri decides it's time to turn her life around - her first move - graduate High School. An accomplishment her father's doctor assures her, may be the very thing to lift her father from his two decade long coma. Still Jerri's years in the joint have left her a little rougher around the edges than your run of the mill Billy Madison..

Strangers With Candy is nothing if not thin on plot - it's more or less a set up to allow the many funny people involved to do their thing. And while I wouldn't say Strangers With Candy is as consistently funny as say, Anchorman, it does offer up hearty laughs. When Jerri refers to her privates as her "Wet-On Sour," I thought I was going to piss myself.

Amy Sedaris is an absolute riot as the clueless Jerri Blank. This is, perhaps, the most likably repugnant heroine since Hatchet Face graced the screen in John Waters' hilarious Cry Baby. What's more, Sedaris has a true gift for physical comedy. Be it the way she scrunches her nose, her various eye twitches, or her come hither body language. Sedaris simply goes for it in one of the most over-the-top comic performances in recent memory. Just looking at her had me in stitches. I suppose the oddest fact about the whole thing is that she's quite a lovely woman sans the Jerri make-up. Stephen Colbert is a scream as a smarmy, self-serving science teacher, and given Colbert's escalating popularity not to mention Hoffman's Oscar win, now is actually a pretty opportune time to release the film.

Paul Dinello (who co-wrote and directed the film) is perfectly goofy as an art teacher while physically imposing Greg Hollimon has some wildly funny moments as Principal Blackman (his name alone put a smile on my face). As for the previously mentioned cameos, they're surprisingly dull and gimmicky. Don't get me wrong. I'm sure that Broderick, Parker, Janney, and Hoffman are fans of the show, but they aren't given anything terribly memorable to do - particularly Broderick who gets a pretty hefty amount of screen-time..

Director Paul Dinello's sporadically paced comedy works best when Amy Sedaris and Stephen Colbert are front and center, and thankfully, that's a good bit of the time. And while this film version of the TV show isn't exactly a laugh per second, affair, some of the bigger laughs are extremely memorable. And now that it's finally receiving a wide release, it's like Jerri herself would proclaim "there is light at the end of the chili hole."