When Mitch’s business fails in California he packs up shop and moves back home to Oregon dragging Meris his stick-thin new wife with him. Mitch is  desperate to get back into his old life with his very immature former high school mate and their acid mouthed suburban wives regardless of how much a total outsider Meris is made to feel by them all.  As soon as his ex-girlfriend shows up Meris is shown the door ….and its the  one that literally opens up into a cheap depressing motel room.

Totally alone in a strange small town Meris gets a part time job in a candy store where she meets the rather bizarre and quirky Trudy a co-worker who soon becomes her best friend.  Trudy brings out the inner punk in Meris and this timid housewife who wanted so desperately to fit in with her husband’s tight clique now dresses like the rock girl she has become,  and  embarrassingly loud mouths them every time she runs into them in this small town.

The transformation is complete when a geeky record store clerk likes her for who she is, and there is a possibility for a happy ending after all.

Billed as a black comedy, this movie is more like an unfunny relationship horror story.  There are far too many mean-spirited characters in this to make the story likable enough. The opening scene where a woman is attacked in a grocery store by another woman and her menstruating blood grossed me out enough to set me on edge, and like the story itself, I never managed to get my equilibrium back.

★★★★