'Candy' a delicious, off-color comedy

"Inspirational Message TBD." So reads Flatpoint High's outdoor message board detailing the exploits of its newest — and most bizarre — student, Jerri Blank. Based upon the Comedy Central show that achieved cult status during its two-season run from 1999 to 2000, "Strangers with Candy" returns to the odyssey of a "47-year-old ex-con-junkie-whore" who wishes to start her life anew by redoing high school. Writers Amy Sedaris, Stephen Colbert and Paul Dinello play Blank, science teacher Chuck Noblet and art teacher Geoffrey Jellineck, respectively. Armed only with the social skills she picked up in jail, Blank attempts to be something "special" in order to rouse her "daddy" from a stress-induced coma, make friends in the stereotypically hostile hallways of secondary education and learn a valuable moral lesson, TBD, in the process.

Movies that parody high school are a dime a dozen every year. Even the DVD cover of "Strangers" mimics that of "Mean Girls." Why is late adolescence so ripe for comedy? High school "was painful for all three of us [writers] and still resonates with us," Dinello said in an interview. Dinello pointed to after-school specials of the 1950s, in which "the most horrible problems ... are lovingly solved" in less than an hour, as inspiration for something more authentic. The specials "tied up [the problem] in a neat bow," he said. "Life doesn't really work that way."

This ex-con's story is strung together by absurd knots and tangles of satire, political incorrectness and gross-out humor. The opening sequence has Blank musing in voiceover with sappy music, "Can we change?" Yet any pretensions to deeper meaning are undercut immediately by a cartoonish montage of her bawdy and violent life in prison, with the requisite crude stabbings and shower confrontations. The terrors of prison life, we will soon see, have left Blank woefully unprepared for the psychological terrors of high school. Even though the basic plotline, like any good teenage movie, has nerds and losers eventually triumphing over the cool crowd by (kinda) winning the science fair, we certainly do not sympathize with the outcast heroes, at least not in a conventional sense.

There's little about this movie that is conventional. In a scene that seems familiar, outside the principal's office our heroine meets a fellow misfit who happens to have red hair. Blank, with her typical wit, strikes up a conversation: "Hey, Red. Carpet match the drapes?" Throughout the movie, Blank tries to seduce, prison-style, "Red," aka Tammi Littlenut (Maria Thayer), while also swooning over the unattainable blonde jock, Brason (Chris Pratt). For a (phony) date with Brason, Jerri wears white leggings circa kindergarten 1993 and a tiny ruffled denim miniskirt that hits above the crotch, more an oversized belt than an item of clothing. Blank is trying to do the "right thing" for a high schooler — make friends and have crushes — the totally wrong way.

In fact, most of the characters fall into this pattern. For instance, in one memorable cameo among many, Sarah Jessica Parker plays the sexually frustrated and totally insensitive grief counselor Peggy Callas (get the pun?), the woman Carrie Bradshaw might have been had she languished in Flatpoint High for a decade.

The best disciple of the wrong way is Chuck Noblet (Colbert), a former science teacher who found Jesus and now teaches that evolution and all modern scientific thought are evil. He also conducts a tortured gay love affair with the effeminate art teacher Geoffrey Jellineck (Dinello). Colbert, revisiting the oblivious egotism he's known for on his Comedy Central show "The Colbert Report," embodies the frustrations of every bitter high school teacher — except that he acts upon those frustrations, relishing the opportunity to humiliate as many teenage (or middle-aged) egos as possible. Watching Colbert and Sedaris spar on the screen, it is easy to believe Dinello's claim that he "knows the funniest people in the world."

Dinello himself, however, as the soft-spoken art teacher, does not shine as brightly as his two colleagues. Perhaps this is due to the demands of being a rookie director. "Directing is a lot easier — acting is a crapshoot," he said. "Acting on stage is easier because of the audience ... you know right away if you're failing. Film acting is in a vacuum. [As a director,] I have a better sense of what's funny or not behind the camera."

The movie falters when interactions seem too scripted or too overtly offensive. Considering all three writers' experience with improvised comedy — they actually met through an improv troupe in Chicago — it is surprising that the cast didn't tap that aspect of their talent, trying to follow the script verbatim instead. "Since we were playing with language, it was hard to improvise," Dinello said. The dialogue might have been too crafted. Dinello could have used a little more spontaneity from his veterans, all well-trained in the art of the surprise zinger.

If you appreciate a raucous satire in the vein of "The Aristocrats" but with a (threadbare) plotline, then find a copy of "Strangers with Candy." It's perfect for that idle Tuesday afternoon in which you find yourself starting to reminisce about the good old days of high school — the saga of Jerri Blank will quickly snap you back to reality. As she says in the final voiceover, "Before you judge me, consider this: you're not so innocent yourself." For those of us who can look back on all the messiness of high school with a sly wink, the candy offered by these eccentric but charming strangers is dangerously delicious.