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'Mona' drowned in stereotype

The premise of "Drowning Mona" is one of those ideas that sounds really cute and funny on paper, but once it reaches the screen becomes a lackluster, unamusing fiasco.

Directed by Nick Gomez, the film relies on the exploitation of "white trash" stereotypes for its humor - diluting the murder mystery essence of the narrative.

Mona Dearly, played by Bette Midler, is murdered when her Yugo plunges off the side of a cliff and into the Hudson River. Police Chief Rash (Danny DeVito), the only intelligent person in this town, must find the killer - and the suspects are nearly everyone in town.

Included in the list of suspects are Rash's daughter Ellen (Neve Campbell) and her fiancˇ Bobby (Casey Affleck) - low-class and uneducated characters who embody the stereotypes that handicap the movie's narrative.

The audience is encouraged to laugh at their poverty, their social outcast status and their backward lifestyle. The filmmakers use the townspeople's status as shorthand for character development and a source for the movie's one-note humor. A demonstration of their basic humanity rarely enters into the picture.

Perhaps the filmmakers had intentions of making subtle ironic commentary on "white trash" stereotypes by invoking all the typical tropes - incompetent police deputies, sexual perversion, raging stupidity, knife-throwing contests and on and on. But their treatment of the characters is condescending at best.

The mystery is simply a vehicle for the "white trash" humor that Gomez relies on to give each scene life. The jokes are tasteless, unfunny and exploitative, just like so much of this movie.

There are few tender moments to balance the humor - even between the soon-to-be-married couple.

Then, there are still fewer scenes where any actual sense of mystery is evoked. So each scene, then, hinges on the joke, which is so steeped in stereotype that it fails to be original or funny.

Despite the derogatory and stereotype-driven characterization, Gomez competently captures the "white trash" aesthetic of the movie's locale - that Andy Griffith chic quality.

Everyone in the town drives a Yugo because of a market research ploy. Each character has a different color and a personalized license plate.

As a humorous element, the Yugo joke fails miserably. Yet, as an establishment of the essence of the town - of the "white trash" culture - it is dead on.

The cheapness and poor taste these cars embody are further expressed by costume and by setting. Dressed in the typical overalls and eating at the greasy local diner, Gomez even makes Neve Campbell look like an extra out of Green Acres.

"Drowning Mona" could have been a scathing exposure of poor white society and a biting send-up of their stereotyped corrupt morals. Instead, its narrative is a thin, poorly developed murder-mystery that does not do Gomez's visuals justice.

"Drowning Mona" should have stayed at the bottom of the Hudson, rotting and rusting, so audiences could have been spared this disaster.