To quote one review, "The laughs in 'Drop Dead Gorgeous' come so cheap that they should reduce the price of the tickets.'". This is quite true, as the movie pokes fun at tons of easy targets, including Japanese and Mexican people, the mentally handicapped, and anorexia.

"Drop Dead Gorgeous" is a fake documentary, similar to "This is Spinal Tap" in some aspects, that chronicles a beauty pagent in Mount Rose, Minnesota. The movie begins by introducing the eight contestants, the main two being Amber Atkins (Kirsten Dunst) and Rebecca Leeman (Denise Richards), the judges, and some other supporting characters, such as Gladys Leeman (Kirstie Alley), Rebecca's mother and a former winner of the beauty pagent, and Annette Atkins (Ellen Barkin), Amber's mother who once competed in the pagent but lost.

Early in the movie, one of the leading contestants mysteriously dies and Amber receives a photograph of the dead girl with the words "you're next" written on the back. Amber nearly quits the pagent after several attempts at killing her injure her mother and kill another contestant. Her mother convinces her to stay in the pagent, and Amber tries the best she can to win, despite fear of death and stiff competition from Rebecca.

Although the movie has a good amount of laughs and keeps the viewer fairly entertained, most of the laughs, as I said, are really cheap. The movie was intended to be a satire of America's obsession with beauty; however, it constantly wanders away from its intended theme and picks on other targets too often.