The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. The Television Movie.

THE POSITIVELY TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE ALLEGED TEXAS CHEERLEADER-MURDERING MOM

Everything is bigger in Texas: the hair, the egos, the crimes. You know that your true-crime story is tinged with a heavy helping of tongue-in-cheek when you title it, deep breath, The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. The television movie is less about the crime itself than it is about the spectacle of the insatiable taste for chronicling at times oddball crime stories. It does not shrink from delving into the case in question. However, it also balances that story with just how people appear to take the thirst for fame to almost killer levels.

Wanda Holloway (Helen Hunt) is unhappy that her daughter Shanna Harper (Frankie Ingrassia) has come up short of joining the cheer squad. Shanna seems to enjoy cheerleading, but unlike Wanda is not obsessed with it. It may be that because Wanda's religious father would not let her join cheer, Wanda is living vicariously through her daughter.

Wanda seems less interested in her son Shane (Frederick Kohler). Shane should be used to that, as both Wanda and his biological father Tony Harper (Gregg Henry) seem to not have any interest in him, let alone in his constant hopes for a truck. Shane and Shanna's stepfather C.D. Holloway (Eddie Jones) is not a bad man. However, he seems very quiet, impassive, rarely interfering or being involved with anything in the household. He does suggest that Wanda not spend money on rulers with Shanna's name on them as promotional material for Shanna (the students being elected to the squad once they pass preliminaries). Wanda ignores this and is enraged when she and the other parents are told that only paper fliers can be distributed. Her efforts to get around this by using the rulers on the handouts backfires disastrously.

Wanda now has rage against her neighbor Verna Heath (Elizabeth Ruscio), whose daughter Amber (Megan Berwick) is both Shanna's rival and friend. Determined to get her way, Wanda contacts her loser ex-brother-in-law Terry (Beau Bridges) for a special assignment. She wants him to find a hitman to get rid of either or both Verna and Amber. Terry finds that his niece's mother is bonkers. She would be the second crazy woman that he has to deal with. At home, Terry's fifth wife Marla (Swoosie Kurtz) is pretty much bonkers herself, shifting from putting Draino on herself to rambling incoherently.

Eventually convincing the police that Wanda is serious, Terry manages to get her on tape for criminal solicitation. Once this story of murder-for-hire over a cheerleading spot makes news, everyone starts looking out for Number One. Everyone involved, even in the most tenuous manner, soon starts getting reporters serious and sleazy to offer them all kinds of incentives. Tony is very happy to try and cash in on his ex-wife's infamy and stupidity. Even Verna seems open to getting some cash consideration in exchange for her side. Who will ultimately cash in on crime? What will Wanda's fate be?

It is if not amusing at least telling that this story of clumsy contract killings and cheerleaders did end up becoming both a tabloid feast and a television movie. Curiously enough, Willing to Kill: The Texas Cheerleader Story television movie premiered a year prior to The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom. Even more curious, the former is actually longer than the latter in terms of runtime. However, no one remembers Willing to Kill. People do remember The Positively True Adventures (I'm tiring of typing out the deliberately lengthy and comic title).  

I put it down to tone. While I have yet to see Willing to Kill, I am guessing that it takes the premise seriously. The Positively True Adventures does not. It instead plays things mostly as dark farce. Wanda Holloway is not a serious person either before or after attempting to get the dimwitted Terry to find someone to dispatch Verna. I think that at one point, she contemplated selling Verna and Amber into white slavery or sending them to Cuba. 

The Positively True Adventures has a great deal of fun looking at the collection of people involved with a very wary eye. Gregg Henry's Tony Harper is probably the sleaziest and shadiest of people, including his own less successful brother. As Tony starts contemplating various offers for his story, we see him on the phone offering pictures of his family for a thousand dollars per photo. He eventually is talked into selling them for $500 per photo. Shanna, who was at times highly upset by the whole ordeal, is similarly able to think about what this means to her. At one point, she is walking down the halls of her school with her friends, talking about how she met television talk show host Phil Donahue and that the tabloid show A Current Affair was going to feature her story.

As this scene goes on, we see Amber walk by to the taunts and sneers of her classmates. Director Michael Richie then moves the camera upwards to show a "Vote for Amber" banner, upon which someone painted a bullseye on it.  We also see that the Heaths are no saints. Verna, despite her claims of trauma over the entire sordid spectacle, is seen cutting out newspaper articles about the case and pasting them onto an album. Whether she does this to chronicle her survival or delighting in the notoriety is not stated. However, the smile that crosses her face suggests that she is enjoying being famous.

About the only one who comes across as remotely rational is Eddie Jones' C.D. The man who seems distant from everyone and everything is the only one who realizes the gravity of the situation. He also comments to himself that he should have spent the money on the flyers, accepting that if he had, the entire situation would have been avoided.

The Positively True Adventures is very knowing about the story. Again, the crime is not the focus of the television movie. To be fair, it does chronicle the events that led to Wanda Holloway's arrest. We even get comic lines before the media frenzy. When Wanda is confronted at her home, she asks to go inside to put away her groceries. Once inside, the serious trouble that she is in appears to escape her. At one point, Wanda asks what she should wear when going to jail. The flummoxed Detective Helton (Gary Grubbs) says to himself as Wanda walks away, "God, I miss drug busts". 

The second half of the television movie, however, is spent on how all these people were basking in the media spotlight regardless of how they ended up looking. It shows even the Heaths as less than ideal. 

For example, as Verna is discussing the possibility of selling the rights to her story, she is told that rival companies are contemplating casting choices for the role of Wanda. Told that they are considering Holly Hunter, Ruscio's Verna says that Hunter would be wrong. She thinks that Susan Lucci should play the woman who attempted to sell her into white slavery. That Verna seems more interested in who is playing her rival than in how someone contemplated murdering her seems to escape our Texas housewife.

This is a deliberately ironic statement in Jane Anderson's screenplay as Holly Hunter did play Wanda Holloway. She, in an Emmy-winning performance, was wonderful in the role. While Hunter sounded more Southern than Texan (a product of being from Georgia than from the Lone Star State), I thought she was absolutely spot-on as Wanda. She made Wanda into a comic character, silly, snobbish and less dangerous as she is clueless. When attending a church service after her arrest, Shanna alerts her mother to a reporter who is there as well. Wanda is all smiles as the unseen pastor tells the congregation, "Let us all take a moment now for a silent meditation for any of our parishioners who are sick, troubled or indicted". The shift in Hunter's face from almost inattentiveness to disbelief adds to the hilarity of things.

Beau Bridges, who like Hunter won an Emmy for his role, is equal as Terry. He goes from wanting to change his life for the better to not. His constant efforts to get the police to take him seriously are fun and funny to watch. He is able to also show a dramatic side in dealing with Kurtz's Marla. I was surprised that Swoosie Kurtz was not nominated for her turn. She made Marla into a near-total loon who spoke negatively about Terry for no other reason that no one in the press was asking to speak to her. Gregg Henry, who seemed to specialize as sleazy men, was fun if at times a bit broad as Tony, the ne'er do well ex-husband who was loving every minute of this scandal. He relished not just seeing his ex-wife make a fool out of herself but also of the fame that he was getting. 

The Positively True Adventures also has an early appearance by future Late Night with Conan O'Brien sidekick Andy Richter as a disinterested police offer. We also see Giovanni Ribisi in an early role as one of Shane's friends. I do wonder if casting Ribisi as someone named Pete Reyes would go over well today.

The Positively True Adventures of the Alleged Texas Cheerleader-Murdering Mom is fully self-aware. It is a bit of a slow start to where I wondered why so many find it hilarious. However, it soon started to click in its amusement about how the most sordid to eccentric figures involved in equally sordid to eccentric stories can end up lapping up the infamy. It lets this collection of colorful people speak for themselves. That show us how to some, being famous and being infamous is interchangeable. 

8/10