JERRI DUTY

A year and a half is a long time to wait for a movie, particularly when you're a ravenous fan of the TV show it's based on. Ever since I first watched DVDs of the Comedy Central show Strangers with Candy, I've been unapologetically addicted to the crude, savagely un-PC romps of Jerri Blank, a 46-year-old high school freshman played with a lunatic's verve by Amy Sedaris. The network cancelled the show in 2001, but fans had cause to rejoice when Sedaris and her creative compadres Paul Dinello and Stephen Colbert reunited to film a feature-length prequel to the series.

Studded with cameo appearances by Allison Janney, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Matthew Broderick and Sarah Jessica Parker, the film debuted at the 2005 Sundance Film Festival. Warner Independent Pictures swiftly scooped up the distribution rights, only to ditch the project nine months later due to a sketchy legal technicality.

Drew and I actually planned to drive to Sundance to see the world premiere, but all the shows sold out. Suddently it looked like we'd never get to see the damn thing at all - an agonizing injustice, we thought, even though rumor had it that the movie wasn't all that great to begin with.

Thanks to the folks at ThinkFilm, who acquired the rights a few months ago, the Strangers with Candy movie hits the big screen in late June (or July, depending on where you live). Was it worth the wait? Yesterday Drew and I arrived at an answer to that question at a midday press screening.

The movie pales in comparison to the funniest episodes from the series. And at 90 minutes, the wafer thin plot about Jerri's bumbling participation in a science fair gets a little old. To complete the list of drawbacks, Stephen Colbert squanders his subversive genius with a histrionic performance that continuously recycles a handful of jokes that aren't funny to begin with.

But I can honestly say that I had a great time despite all that. From her opening scenes in a women's prison to a gym exercise where she gets pummeled by a charging bull, Amy delivers all the ugliness, offensiveness and pants-wetting hilariousness we've come to expect from Jerri Blank.

I'm not a big Sarah Jessica Parker fan, but she brings insensitivity to impressive new heights as a grief counselor who offers useless advice to her students and still demands tips at the end of the gab session.

If you've never seen the show before, chances are you'll be left cold by all this. So be sure to check out some Flatpoint High hijinks on the small screen before you pay big bucks to partake in a filthy freshman year of which no locker room shower could ever cleanse you. Even if you use a loofah.