"Strangers with Candy," a colorful and burlesque comedy based on the eponymous cult television series which aired on Comedy Central from 1999 to 2000 will be released on DVD on Nov. 14.

Both the series and the film star Amy Sedaris as Jerri Blank, a 46-year-old ex-junkie, ex-prostitute and convict who left home as a teenager, returns 32 years later to find that her father has been in a grief-induced coma since she left and that her mother has died.

Sedaris' character decides to return to Flatpoint High School in the pale little town where she grew up, in hope that by picking up where she left off 30 years ago, her father would wake up.

The buck-toothed, ridiculously dressed Blank doesn't mince her words. She describes herself as "a boozer, a user and a loser," who desperately and unsuccessfully tries to redeem herself.

Blank believes that school will help her achieve this goal, and so she sets her mind on winning the first prize in the Flatpoint High School science fair.

Working on the science team project gives her many opportunities to test her disrespectful wit against racial or social taboos.

She bluntly says to her teammates, "Koreans and Jews will make up the core of the think tank."

The movie, like the series, is a powerful cocktail of vulgarity, provocative jokes and nonsensical situations that gives it a unique and incendiary style.

"Strangers with Candy," which is filled with explicit jokes and provocative scenes, is best described as outrageously witty.

It is a parody of the many moralizing movies that picture characters being rewarded and changed through their hard work. It challenges the middle-class, well-thinking morality so common in mainstream Hollywood.

This is not your typical movie, and it offers a dark piece of wisdom: People cannot change.

"No matter how hard you try, you cannot change your lot in life. It's all futile," said the director, Paul Dinello, of the morale of his movie.

Dinello, who not only directed the movie, but also wrote the script together with his long-time friend and work partner Stephen Colbert, recognized having a blast working on the scenario.

"We just loved working on Amy's character, and we really enjoy working together with Amy and Steve. I think it shows through our movie," Dinello said.

"Strangers with Candy" is Dinello's first feature, but he worked on the television series as an actor when it aired on Comedy Central five years ago, and it taught him a thing or two, he said.

"It was still strange to have all the details of the film run by me," Dinello said, "but it was wonderful to have such a creative freedom."

This freedom allowed Dinello to create a nonconventional and colorful movie that will make you laugh, especially the first 45 minutes of it, but it will also make you question your life and your ability to change.


Three reels out of five