So, it’s a pretty well-known fact at this point that I think Veronica Mars was the best thing on TV last season.
So how is it that I’m finding out only now that Kristen Bell starred in a musical version of Reefer Madness?
Update: The DVD of this appears to be available for pre-order. From the review:
The made-for-cable musical satire Reefer Madness is based on the award-winning play of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the notorious–and deliciously awful–1936 anti-marijuana film originally titled Tell Your Children. A smarmy lecturer (Alan Cumming in the first of his three roles in the film) arrives in a typical small town of the late 1930s to warn the populace of the dangers of the “evil weed”, bringing along a lurid propaganda film to dramatize his message. In broad, unsubtle and hilarious strokes, the movie-within-a-movie shows how even a squeaky-clean pair of highschoolers named Mary Lane (Kristen Bell) and Jimmy Harper (Christian Campbell) can become hopeless dope addicts by succumbing to the lure of marijuana. Reefer Madness is not only a savage skewering of the original black-and-white movie (some of the musical’s campiest lines are taken directly from the earlier script!), but also a devastating attack on what playwrights Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney consider to be the real reason that the 1936 movie was made: To frighten the public out of their wits in order to keep them under the thumb of an oppressive government. Thus, the musical manages to take a number of not-so-veiled swipes at xenophobia, racism, McCarthyism, the Bush Administration’s Homeland Security policy, and even the recent FCC clampdown on “offensive” TV fare
Sold!
1 comment for “Lascivious and funny”