Other articles by Phil Villarreal:

'Conduit' leads new games lineup Local scene: Extra stands up to Johnny DeppAmphi grad, 33, picked for White House FellowshipTucson brothers create iPhone sensationDirector's layoff a blow to AZ Film OfficeEsplendor Resort offer: Stay now, pay later 'Ghostbusters' rocks the video game world Local scene: Production coordinator pushes Tucson localesNow playing: locally made studio films'40 Under 40' will celebrate Tucson's top professionals

Administrative & Professional
Tucson Urban League
CEO/President Sales and Marketing
Everready Glass
Sales Reps Health Care
Sierra Tucson
Eating Disorders Program Coordinator Administrative & Professional
Jorgensen Brooks Group
Counselor Trades/Construction
RANCHO RESORT
MAINTANANCE POSITION Health Care
CENTRAL ARIZONA COLLEGE
DIRECTOR OF HEALTH INFORMATION MANAGEMENT Health Care
Dependable Health Services
Physical Therapists

Jerri Blank and Billy Madison could have been pals. Both are overage high school students ostracized for their creepy haplessness. Had they enrolled at the same school, at least neither would have had to eat lunch alone.

Jerri, the bug-eyed, oblivious creation of comedian Amy Sedaris, is just as rich a comic creation as Adam Sandler's Billy. Too bad her movie, "Strangers With Candy," isn't fit to wipe the chalkboard of "Billy Madison."

A 46-year-old career criminal and recovering drug addict, Jerri is back in school to get a fresh start in life and impress her comatose father. She recasts herself as a 15-year-old, attempting to pal around with her weirded-out classmates and worm her way into the popular clique. Jerri is so devoted she insists on being driven to school — which is just across the street — by her stepmother, who's about her age.

"Strangers With Candy" is adapted from the 1999-2000 Comedy Central series, which sold well enough on DVD to merit a feature film. It's the same afterlife the series "Firefly" found with the movie "Serenity."

Bubbling with ludicrous satire that's often too wacky and disturbing for its own good, the comedy rambles with the consistency of a high school play. It's a one-joke film that thinks its joke is funnier than it is and runs it into the ground, but not before getting a few laughs.

Although Paul Dinello is credited as director, the film belongs to Sedaris, for whom the movie amounts to nearly a one-woman show. Her every line and gesture is a sabertoothed mockery of the way some pompous teens think and behave, and almost every other character in the movie is a bowling pin that exists solely to be knocked around by her lunacy.

The nearly nonexistent plot involves Jerri's efforts to lead a gang of social rejects to a science fair victory over a squad of popular, good-looking students, who seek Jerri as a spy to aid their cause. This sets up the standard teen movie fallback plot of the social outcast who tries to move up in the world by abandoning her old dorky friends in favor of the elite. "Strangers With Candy" tiptoes the line between making fun of the plot and adhering to it.

Much of the movie's fault comes from the screenplay, on which Sedaris and Dinello collaborated with Stephen Colbert, who plays petty, insipid science teacher Chuck Noblet.

The trio called in favors to drag in a number of celebrities for cameos, including Philip Seymour Hoffman, Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick. None of them is given anything funny to say or do, although it's worth at least a giggle to see them pop up in such a low-budget movie.

The joke, as with most everything else in the movie, is really on the audience.