Taglines: You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be offended.
The Opposite of Sex movie storyline. Sixteen-year-old Dedee Truitt (Christina Ricci) runs away from home. She is pregnant by her ex-boyfriend, Randy Cates (William Lee Scott). Not revealing her pregnancy, Dedee eventually moves in with her much older half-brother Bill (Martin Donovan), a gay teacher in a conservative, suburban community in Saint Joseph County, Indiana.
Although he is living with Matt (Ivan Sergei), Bill still mourns the loss of his previous partner, Tom, who died of AIDS some time ago. Bill maintains a friendship with Tom’s younger sister, Lucia (Lisa Kudrow), who idolized her brother. Dedee seduces Matt, then tricks him into believing he has impregnated her. They elope, leaving Bill and Lucia to track them down.
Bill and Lucia find Dedee and Matt, only to discover Dedee has stolen Tom’s ashes and is holding them for ransom. Randy also finds Dedee; they inform Matt that they are taking the ashes and moving away. They escape but soon get into an argument that leads to Dedee accidentally shooting Randy. She and Matt escape to Canada.
Bill eventually tracks down Matt and Dedee. Dedee goes into labor and Bill accompanies her into the delivery room. After giving birth to her son, Dedee returns Tom’s ashes to Bill, apologizing for her actions in the past year.
Lucia and Bill have a falling out after Lucia implies that Tom died as a result of having gay sex. Despondent, Lucia has a one-night stand with Sheriff Carl Tippett (Lyle Lovett) who had previously made unsuccessful romantic overtures to her. Lucia soon discovers that she is pregnant.
The Opposite of Sex is a 1998 American romantic comedy film written and directed by Don Roos and stars Christina Ricci, Martin Donovan, Lisa Kudrow, Lyle Lovett, Johnny Galecki, Ivan Sergei, Leslie Grossman, Megan Blake, Chauncey Leopardi and Heather Fairfield.
For its North American run, The Opposite of Sex took in film rentals of $5,881,367. The opening weekend saw a per screen average of $20,477 for the 5 theaters showing it.
Film Review for The Opposite of Sex
Christina Ricci has morphed enchantingly from wicked little Wednesday of the ”Addams Family” comedies into Lolita’s evil twin. Voluptuous and scheming in Don Roos’s gleefully acerbic comedy ”The Opposite of Sex,” she plays the nasty little baggage named Dedee whose sexual chicanery and self-interest know no bounds.
Neither does Mr. Roos’s barbed humor as he mocks preconceptions about straight and gay life styles with total abandon, rude epithets and all. What redeem the film’s surface bitterness are sharp observations, laceratingly funny dialogue and something Dedee claims to find especially loathsome: a secret heart of gold.
Dedee narrates this busily plotted, nicely unpredictable sex comedy with a sarcastic edge. (”If you think I’m just plucky and scrappy and all I need is love, you’re in over your head,” she tells the audience right off the bat.) Trying out little tricks on her listeners whenever she feels like it, she explains how she left home in Louisiana to barge in on Bill (Martin Donovan), her level-headed half brother.
Bill is the kind of schoolteacher who, when finding rude graffiti about himself on a bathroom wall, corrects its faulty grammar. Bill is also gay, and his happy, stable relationship with Matt (Ivan Sergei) gives Dedee her first chance to pounce. Stacked little Dedee doesn’t so much seduce Matt as plop down in a bathing suit and bully him into giving heterosexuality a try. Soon she is pregnant and has run off with both Matt and a chunk of her half brother’s savings, prompting an anti-Dedee backlash from the film’s colorful array of supporting characters.
Funniest and most touching of these is Lisa Kudrow’s Lucia, the sister of Bill’s previous lover, who died of AIDS. (Dedee insists on referring to him as ”Tom the dead guy.”) Ms. Kudrow sustains her expert ”Friends” timing in a role that’s a marked departure: a lonely, spinsterish schoolteacher who expresses her jealousy of others’ happiness in especially funny ways.
”I never knew my father,” Dedee tells her, by way of explaining the liaison with Matt. ”And you really think this is a good way to make up for it?” Lucia inquires. To Matt’s claims that he is now bisexual, Lucia snaps: ”Please, I went to a bar mitzvah once. That doesn’t make me Jewish.”
Lucia and Bill, played with cool, quiet strength by Mr. Donovan, wind up joining forces in pursuit of Dedee, whom Lucia calls ”the human tabloid.” They track her to another city and spy on her with yet another lover. ”That can’t be good for the baby,” muses Lucia, peering through a window. ”Not only that, she’s gonna smoke a cigarette after,” adds Bill. And what about Matt, who by now is being cuckolded? (”He made his bed, he can lie in it.” ”If there’s room.”)
Well into this comedy of unspeakably bad manners (Dedee’s, anyway), the wisecracks are outweighed by gratifyingly tenderhearted developments. Mr. Roos, making his directorial debut (after strong screenwriting credits including ”Boys on the Side,” ”Love Field” and ”Single White Female”), guides his lonely, smart-talking characters into relationships none ever thought possible.
This makes for a happy ending even if Dedee winds up throwing something at the camera. And the film’s resolution gracefully repudiates all its poisonous talk, especially the stream of small-minded slurs about gay life that come from Dedee. Essentially generous, ”The Opposite of Sex” winds up showing rotten little Dedee how little sense there is in stereotypes, and how varied and surprising love can be.
Also in ”The Opposite of Sex” are Lyle Lovett as an accommodating policeman and Johnny Galecki as a gay student who tries to blackmail Bill after Matt vanishes. ”For all I know, you killed him,” the boy insists. ”For all you know,” Bill replies evenly, ”I’m just getting started.”
The Opposite of Sex (1998)
Directed by: Don Roos
Starring: Christina Ricci, Martin Donovan, Lisa Kudrow, Lyle Lovett, Johnny Galecki, Ivan Sergei, Leslie Grossman, Megan Blake, Chauncey Leopardi, Heather Fairfield
Screenplay by: Don Roos
Production Design by: Michael Paul Clausen
Cinematography by: Hubert Taczanowski
Film Editing by: David Codron
Costume Design by: Peter Mitchell
Set Decoration by: Kristin Peterson
Music by: Mason Daring
MPAA Rating: R for strong language and sex related dialogue and sexuality.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: May 22, 1998
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