Die, Mommie, Die!

Beautiful, tragic drag queens, hot gay guys, witty finger-snapping one liners-- This movie is just downright fun. If you like campy movies you'll love it. Charles Busch plays his part perfectly, and Stark Sands is scrumptious.... Full review

Great, great family movie, if your family is open-minded. I thought it had stylish class mixed with humor, and the acting was raw, but artisticly.... Full review

How is the average rating C+ when the lowest rating is C and all the other ratings are B or higher? Anyway....this movie was more fun than expected. Apparently it's even funnier if you get all the references to Bette Davis,... Full review

This movie was made for me! Truly campy and somewhat tastless. A great tribute to those old "women's movies" genre from the fifties. Charles Bush is hilarious even when he isn't supposed to be. Or is he?... Full review

Tonight, I discovered a great talented actor, and his name is, Stark Sands. Sexy, talented, and a terrific actor! Stark steals the film with his talent. This film is so original and destined to become a classic. The entire cast is... Full review

Charles Busch has quickly worked his way into being my favorite writer/actor after seeing him in "Die Mommie Die!" This movie is absolute first-class acting and the lines are HALARIOUS. The visuals are stunning, the costuming divine and the story is... Full review

Very humorous, always campy tale of aging star whose parade has long since skipped off down the road. (Yes, shades of SUNSET BOULEVARD, to be sure). Charles Busch brings his stage drama/comedy/what have you to the big screen, and it's a... Full review

I watched this as someone who knows and loves the styles of movie-making and acting that Busch and company are spoofing. Even so, I occasionally found the script it a little draggy, the photography a little dark and blocking a little... Full review

If you're up for a bit of campy, fun melodrama then this could be right up your alley. I laughed throughout this movie - more from its sheer absurdity more than anything else, but it did come up with the goods... Full review

Beautiful, glamorous, fading singer Angela Arden (Charles Busch) is miserable. Her horrible husband is making life hell; her daughter Edith (Natasha Lyonne) loves daddy--too much; her son Lance (Stark Sands) is gay and into drugs; her lover Tony Parker (Jason Priestley)... Full review

There's also some stills regarding Busch's original play, plus interviews with the set and costume designers (the latter having furnished 40 costumes for Busch). In case it hasn't yet occurred, Busch plays the matriarch in drag, and with great affection for his sleazy archetype. ... Full Review

The movie enhances its illusion with terrific '60s costumes, gloriously phony rear-projection imagery and whip-crack dialogue that spoofs the showdown between Hollywood and hippiedom. Restraint is not a quality we often associate with drag queens, but star and screenwriter Charles Busch allows his outlandishly allusive script and Rucker's meticulously cribbed direction to fuel a campfire that his subtle performance merely stokes. ... Full Review

It's like Busch knew that, outside major cities, no audience would appreciate it--but he tried to appeal to them anyway. Here, much is made of the best mood lighting this side of Far From Heaven , and there are some great comic situations, but the incest jokes and mock sexual tension are about as exciting as the falsies in Busch's D cup. ... Full Review

Salon interviewed Priestley during a junket for gender-bender Charles Busch's strange, satirical faux-noir "Die Mommie Die," in which the former TV star plays actor Tony Parker, who is said to have an "11-inch dong" or, as one character puts it, the "biggest cock this side of the San Andreas fault" and who carries on simultaneous affairs with a mother (Busch), her daughter (Natasha Lyonne) and her teenage son (Stark Sands). ... Full Review

Busch's co-stars gamely support him throughout this let's-put-on-a-show romp ("Die Mommie Die" was reportedly filmed in only 18 days); Priestley is especially good in a role that might once have suited Tab Hunter, and Frances Conroy pours a distinctively Southern syrup of molasses and bile onto her lines as the Sussmans' dipsomaniac maid, Bootsie. ... Full Review

W hen Rupert Everett dons drag to play Camilla Fritton, the headmistress of an English girls school in tomorrow's "St. Trinian's," it's not meant as a joke. ... Full Article

Parody is hard to do, and it's harder to do well. With all the winking and nodding, it's easy for writers, actors and directors to let a show slip into self-indulgence. ... Full Article

Funnyman Jack Black and "Die, Mommie, Die!" star Jason Priestley both turn 38 today. The question is ... ... Full Article

You could call "Die Mommie Die!" campy, or silly or overwrought; you could say its surprises are telegraphed and its big twist is more like a gentle curve. ... Full Article

WITH ITS unsubtle, scattershot approach to the parody of such films as "Now, Voyager" and "Hush . . . Hush, Sweet Charlotte," playwright and drag performer Charles Busch's campy stage play "Die Mommie Die!" was probably a funny enough thing... ... Full Article

One thing is certain. Charles Busch's Hollywood Star-System-era, glamorama drag is fabulous. In Die Mommie Die! , the veteran performer channels Bette Davis and Joan Crawford in Angela Arden, equal parts steely reserve and "feminine" vulnerability. ... Full Article