The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom

Stars: Holly Hunter (The Firm, Broadcast News), Beau Bridges (The Fabulous Baker Boys, Married to It), Swoosie Kurtz (The World According to Garp). Holly Hunter delivers an Oscar-quality performance in director Michael Ritchie's (The Candidate, Smile, Diggstown) outstanding satire based on the bizarre case of a Texas housewife accused of solicitation for murder. Hunter plays Wanda Holloway, a determined if somewhat wacky social climber who wants the best for her kids. As the film opens, she's avidly promoting her junior high school daughter Shanna for cheerleader, but has the mat pulled out from under her when Shanna is disqualified for handing out name-embossed rulers. Although Shanna seems ready to toss in her pom-poms, Wanda will have none of it: she suspects that her archenemy Verna Heath, whose daughter Amber made the cheerleading squad, is somehow responsible for Shanna's loss. Wanda contacts her former brother-in-law Terry (Beau Bridges)--an ex-jailbird trying to get on the straight and narrow with a good paying oil worker's salary and a wife (Swoosie Kurtz) who is wonderful in every respect, except for the fact that she's plumb crazy. Wanda asks Terry to find a hit man to do a white out number on Verna Heath ("God, I'm sitting here talking about taking someone's life. I do believe I'm going downhill, aren't I?"). But Terry takes her request to the police-which touches off a comic wire surveillance routine, and more. As the title suggests, writer Jane Anderson and director Ritchie have more up their sleeve than simple tabloid journalism. On the contrary, Wanda's story is the impetus for a scathingly funny look at the scandalous multi-million dollar business of buying up the book and movie rights to socio- and psychopath's lives. The ultimate inside joke comes when Verna Heath is told that the movie producers are considering Holly Hunter for the role of Wanda, but Verna suggests daytime soap star Susan Lucci instead. We're fortunate they stuck with Hunter, because this is her baby from opening to closing frame, and she's never been better. Audience: What's really cool about the film is that it gets to have its cake and eat it to. The tabloid audience will devour this, as will anyone who is interested in a sharp penetrating--albeit hilarious--probe of the media.