Drop Dead Gorgeous
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Drop Dead Gorgeous was a film originally released in 1999. It starred Denise Richards and Kirsten Dunst as rivals in a beauty pageant called the Mount Rose American Teen Princess Pageant, in the small town of Mount Rose, Minnesota. The film is a fictitious documentary covering the pageant.
Plot
Many girls in the small town decide to compete in the pageant, because they're in a small town and there isn't much else for them to do. Amber Atkins (played by Dunst) wishes to win the scholarship money which comes with winning the title, so she can leave Mount Rose and live a life similar to her idol, Diane Sawyer. Rebecca Leeman (played by Richards) is the daughter of the richest man in town, and her mother (played by Kirstie Alley) is the head of the pageant in the town (having been a former winner herself). This prompts many whispers around town that the contest is fixed.
Many odd things start happening to people in the pageant, including rival Tammy Curry being blown up while riding a tractor, and Amber's love interest shooting himself accidentally (even though Rebecca was the head of the Lutheran Sisterhood Gun Club and knew more about guns than he did). Finally, Amber decides to pull out of the pageant after her mother (played by Ellen Barkin) is injured due to a bomb exploding in their trailer. After a heart-to-heart talk with her mother's friend Loretta (Allison Janney), Amber reconsiders and performs her tap-dance number at the pageant. She loses to Rebecca; however, she becomes Mount Rose's American Teen Princess after Rebecca's swan float catches fire, consuming her in the flames.
Amber goes on to the state competition and wins it by default after all the other contestants fall ill with food poisoning. As a result, she gets an all-expenses-paid trip to Alabama, where the national American Teen Princess Pageant is to be held. Amber and the other contestants find that the company has been shut down by the IRS, and the distraught girls wreck the buildings with their suitcases.
In the end, however, Amber Atkins does become a television reporter, getting her start by reporting on a breaking news event, when a reporter was injured by Rebecca Leeman's mother, who has cracked and become a suicide sniper atop the supermarket.