Product Description

Get ready for laughs the size of Texas when Olivia Newton-John, Beau Bridges, Bonnie Bedelia and Delta Burke lead an all-star cast in this twisted, white-trash tale "that puts the 'fun' in 'dysfunctional'" (Toronto Sun). The hilariously sordid details about a southern family surface with a vengeance when relatives converge for the funeral of "Grandma Peggy," who died after tripping over her lover's wooden legs! Toss in a couple of feuding, big-haired daughters, a jumpy aunt who just quit smoking, the scorned neighbor from hell, and crazy, cross-dressing "Brother Boy" - and you've got an outrageous "train wreck you can't help but watch!" (Chicago Tribune)

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #4962 in DVD
• Brand: NEWTON-JOHN,OLIVIA
• Released on: 2003-03-18
• Rating: R (Restricted)
• Aspect ratio: 1.77:1
• Formats: Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, DVD, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: .25 pounds
• Running time: 111 minutes

Amazon.com
If you've got a taste for big hair, broad Texas accents, and gay rights, this mixture of white-trash comedy and coming-out melodrama is for you. Sordid Lives starts out as chicken-fried farce, as a funeral is prepared for a woman who died when she tripped over her adulterous lover's wooden legs; about midway the emphasis shifts to a drag queen unfairly held in a mental institution and the dead woman's grandson, an actor in Los Angeles who hasn't come out to his mother. The tone shifts wildly, and the humor depends on your fondness for the white-trash genre--if you like it, this will tickle your ribs; if you don't, it'll fall flat as the panhandle landscape. But it must be said that the cast (including Bonnie Bedelia, Beau Bridges, Delta Burke, and Olivia Newton-John) dives right in, no matter how over-the-top their characters get. --Bret Fetzer

Customer Reviews

Laugh-Out-Loud Hysteria and a Message FINALLY ON DVD
I caught this film in a theater in Ft. Lauderdale and I was bowled over. AT last, it's been released on DVD and it's worth the wait. Seeing it again, I laughed even more than the first time - the characters get under your skin with their bizarre antics and the direction is truly clever, juxtaposing a running plotline about a white-trash funeral and the surreal characters who come together as a result. Special kudos to Bonnie Bedelia, who is shrill but ultimately a real character. And Leslie Jordan as a drag-queen in a mental institution channeling Tammy Wynette is flat out HYSTERICAL.

The DVD has some standard extras - deleted scenes, extra songs, a new opening, and commentary from stars and the director. I promise you - this is a movie you will share with your friends and laugh laugh laugh! Sure, it can be corny and superficial at times, but lemme tell ya...the characters are never less than 3-dimensionsal.

This is a sharp, witty, humane movie with a terrific ensemble cast that deserves attention. An intertwined collection of small town stories about faith, love and redemption, "Sordid Lives" has more laughs in its first 15 minutes than most comedies enjoy in two hours. The performances are uniformly file, including Bonnie Bedelia, Delta Burke, Olivia Newton-John (a sweet and pleasant surprise), Leslie Jordan, and Beau Bridges. There are moments of sheer bliss as a town prepares to bury one of its own against a backdrop of angst, humor and real drama. Even the hysterical parts are handled with great sentiment and care. The audience I saw the movie with was cackling with laughter! A terrific film!

A hoot and a howl
"Sordid Lives" received only a limited release in theaters in the Los Angeles area, so it has not been seen by nearly as many people as it should.

Writer-director Del Shores balances delicate sensitivity with gut-busting laughs in this tale of a Texas family beset by death and homosexuality, not necessarily in that order.

The central figure, Ty, is a gay TV soap opera actor who is "out" to his friends and associates, but still closeted to his Texas family, who have gone so far as to institutionalize another family member ("Brother Boy") simply because of his penchant for dressing up like Tammy Wynette.

The two story elements are brought together over the funeral of the family matriarch, who passed away in the midst of a motel room tryst with a married man. (She tripped over one of his prosthetic legs and hit her head on a bathroom sink).

Beau Bridges, Delta Burke, Bonnie Bedelia and Oliva Newton-John bring Shores' characters to life in this hysterical film adaptation of his long-running stage hit.

Don't miss it when it arrives on home video.

This movie is a reflection of it's characters - Hysterical!!
It was easy to invision Delta Burke as the queen of a trailer court type neighborhood, but when you throw in Olivia Newton-John as a lesbian folk singer and Beau Bridges as a pathetic loser you begin to see the picture of a highly dysfunctional group of friends and relatives intertwined in a tale, more about righting the wrongs of a dysfunctional history and less about the real story: What are we going to bury mama in now that she is dead. Apparently she tripped over Beau Bridges prosthetic leg on the way to the bathroom in a cheap motel where they were doing the nasty!! Sordid Lives is a befitting title to a movie that will have you somewhere between horrified and in tears from laughter. Sounds like the way things were in many families I know!