“Sassy Pants” (2011)
 |
| Ashley Rickards and Anna Gunn in "Sassy Pants." |
We are completely, and embarrassingly, addicted to MTV’s “Awkward,” (the season finale aired this week). That said, while trolling through Netflix (each time takes almost as long as whatever we end up watching), we came across “Sassy Pants,” an indie film starring “Awkward’s” Ashley Rickards as teen Bethanny. It’s an odd little tidbit of a movie, but, nonetheless, enjoyable and well-acted. Look for character actor Diedrich Bader as Rickards’ gay dad, and “I-See-Dead-People”’s Haley Joel Osmet as Bader’s much-younger, 80’s coiffed, flashy, live-in lover. “Breaking Bad’s” Anna Gunn is her repressed, home-schooling mother, and a channeling-Shirley Maclaine Jenny O’Hara is the irascible chain-smoking, bed-ridden grandmother. Home-schooled, high-school graduate Bethanny desperately wants to break free of her repressive, San Fernando Valley home life. When pushed to the limit, she runs away to her dad’s trailer-park home in Bakersfield, and gets a job at the mall. There’s more to the movie than this, and you’ll just have to watch it to find out.
