Full Review

A prequel to the Comedy Central cable television series of the same name, the vulgar farce "Strangers With Candy" (THINKFilm) revolves around a 47-year-old misfit, Jerri Blank (Amy Sedaris), recently released from prison, who to reform her life goes back to high school where she competes in a science fair with some nerdy students against a team of popular kids. By undertaking the project, she hopes to coax her dad (Dan Hedaya) out of his "self-induced coma," for which her former ways were partly to blame.

Stephen Colbert, so sharp in Comedy Central's "The Colbert Report," plays the school's gay Christian science teacher, Chuck Noblet -- he teaches creationism and his periodic table of elements is shaped like a cross -- who is having an affair with a male colleague.

With wit at a premium amid the coarseness, the pressing question is how director Paul Dinello's puerile school satire attracted a cast that includes Matthew Broderick as a rival science teacher, Sarah Jessica Parker as a guidance counselor, Allison Janney and Philip Seymour Hoffman as school board officials, and Ian Holm as the Blanks' family doctor.

Early on, Holm's character tells Jerri that for her father's condition to improve she must recreate a time "when life was good and precious and worth being conscious for." In other words, before the opening credits.

The film contains pervasive crude and sexual humor and sight gags, including inappropriate sexual situations involving an adult and teens, brief partial female nudity, an obscene drawing, drug content involving minors, a running homosexual gag, recurring crude language and profanity. The USCCB Office for Film & Broadcasting classification is O -- morally offensive. The Motion Picture Association of America rating is R -- restricted. Under 17 requires accompanying parent or adult guardian.

Movies have been evaluated by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishop's Office for Film and Broadcasting according to artistic merit and moral suitability. The reviews include the USCCB rating, the Motion Picture Association of America rating, and a brief synopsis of the movie.

The classifications are as follows:

• A-I -- general patronage;
• A-II -- adults and adolescents;
• A-III -- adults;
• A-IV**
• L -- limited adult audience, films whose problematic content many adults would find troubling. L replaces the previous classification, A-IV.
• O -- morally offensive.