Drop Dead Gorgeous is one of the most subversive and enjoyable indie offerings of the year.

Filmed in a clever 'mockumentary' style, the film chronicles the vicious behind-the-scenes skulduggery that attends the (fictional) South Rose Miss Teen Princess America beauty pageant; it is infused with the same black spirit that pervaded Heathers.

Set in Minnesota, Drop Dead Gorgeous plunges us into a nasty smalltown environment which is gearing up to host the pageant, and introduces us to four memorable specimens. The pageant is viewed as a straight fight between stinking-rich spoilt-brat Becky (Denise Richards) and good-natured trailer-trash kid Amber (Kirsten Dunst) - but it also represents a proxy war between their respective mothers (Alley and Barkin) who occupy opposing poles of the class and social spectrum.

Most of the acting is downright supreme: Denise Richards smoulders as the queen bitch of the piece, a pouting hellcat and all-around lethal weapon. Kirsten Dunst, the film's human centre, is both sweet and ferociously smart as the put-upon underdog, while Ellen Barkin is unforgettable as her inelegantly wasted mother, the foul-mouthed, permanently-sozzled embodiment of every 'redneck' stereotype ever spawned. Alley, it must be said, is a little over-the-top as Richards' monstrously horrendous all-American mother, the root of all the film's evil.

But for all the film's Midwestern madness, it is first and foremost a comedy: Barkin provides most of it, but the entire cast are on top form.