Dolly Parton is a great American, but she’s big in Australia, too, and she means the world to the heroine of “Seriously Red,”Krew Boylan plays the lead role and wrote the script. This is a very modest vehicle.
The story of an awkward woman who is forced to impersonate Dolly gradually becomes a crowd-pleaser. However, it’s only a small part of a larger examination of confidence that can be gained from such impersonation.
Boylan and Gracie Otto, her director (the 2021 documentary “Under the Volcano”Parton is a true love, and “Seriously Red”Dolly quotes are sprinkled throughout the film, both in dialogue form as well as on-screen title cards. “Storms make trees take deeper roots,” quotes Boylan’s Red, a good-hearted but rather lost woman who is living in her mother’s garage and floundering at her current job in finance. Red is a lost soul who can’t seem to find her identity or purpose in life, and jobs don’t last for long.
“Find out who you are, and do it on purpose,”A Dolly quote is read out loud and clearly on the screen. “Seriously Red”This movie is about how the main character loses her gig because she got drunk at a company event. Red can be very prudish when she’s sober. In fact, she once said it. “I want to be taken seriously, for swear-word’s sake,”The woman is not able to actually use a swear term.
One of the most interesting aspects about “Seriously Red”The changing treatment of Francis (Thomas Campbell), “Love and Monsters”), who has been a supporter of Red’s for a very long time. In a moment of desperation after losing her job, Red tells her judgmental mother that she is dating Francis, but he has all the movie signifiers of Gay Best Friend of Heroine — he helps Red try on Dolly wigs and even tries one on himself, and he has a poster up in his apartment of the campy Glynis Johns movie “The Weak and the Wicked.”
Francis appears to be an old-fashioned gay character that listens only to the problems of his best friend, Red. Red asks Francis which star he would prefer to be, and he replies that he would love to be Red. Then, Francis performs a perfect impersonation of Red’s insecure manner of speaking. This character keeps moving forward until the end of the film when he arrives at a dinner with a woman date and we suddenly realize that this Gay Best Friend on the surface is actually a straight friend who would love to be the lover for the heroine if he had the nerve.
When Red gets up and sings a version of Dolly’s hit “9 to 5,” she doesn’t sound too much like Parton, and she seems very unhappy. But she is as “Seriously Red”Red does a serious Dolly impression at clubs and Boylan begins to sound more and more like Dolly. This puts a slight quiver in her voice. Boylan’s Red even gets breast implants to look more like her idol, a process that the movie regards very ambivalently.
Red auditions for Dolly in a show featuring a very handsome Kenny Rogers impersonator (Daniel Webber who played Vince Neil in Motley Crue’s biopic). “The Dirt”He is her boyfriend), she accepts the job and begins an affair. We see something of the world of impersonators here, performers who do the only-first-name-needed divas: Marilyn, Liz, Barbra, Tina, Liza. Real-life couple Rose Byrne and Bobby Cannavale also make appearances as an impersonator of Elvis (Byrne) and a former impersonator of Neil Diamond (Cannavale), but they are here strictly as foils for Boylan’s Red.
The most surprising thing about the comically light is “Seriously Red”The best thing about it is its seriousness. There comes a moment towards the end when Boylan’s Red is talking about why she impersonates Dolly and she says, “I just wanted that feeling that everyone else looks like they’re having… you know, that they’re respected.”Red crosses her eyes as though she is feeling the need to be a clown. Boylan has clearly thought through what she wants this movie say, but her voice trailed off.
Boylan doesn’t ask for sympathy, which makes the result so touching. Boylan earns it by being fair and sensitive as a performer, but also as a writer. She deals with Dolly’s impact on people who want to be their best selves.
“Seriously Red”The 2022 SXSW Film Festival will host its world premiere.