If there's one thing that can be said about comedy these days its that it can be plainly generic. What with the "frat pack" reusing ideas and characters and swirling their members into one (usually, there are exceptions) stinker after another. What film and the public needs now is a real comic firecracker that's just in there own league, like an Eve Arden for the '00s. What we need is a style of comedy that doesn't need a constant barrage of sex jokes/bathroom humor to appeal to an audience. What we need comes in the form of that criminally underused comedic presence that made SNL in the '90s so great. We simply need more of...
....Cheri Oteri in Dumb and Dumberer (2003)
In this hilarious prequel to Dumb and Dumber, Cheri Oteri plays Ms. Heller (aka The Lunch Lady) at a Providence high school in the late '80s.
The movie tells the story of how the stupid students Harry and Lloyd first met in high school and how they get mixed up with the scheming Ms. Heller and her lover Principal Collins (Eugene Levy at his best).
What the two have been doing, you see, is embezzling money from the school and have been involved in scam after scam for years. There latest scheme involves creating a fake "special needs" class so they will recieve a big fat check for some special grant, and then escape to Hawaii.
Ms. Heller then becomes the new teacher for the class, and tells Harry and Lloyd to recruit more special perople. While the plot is pretty lame (but occasionally very funny) and is just an average comedy at best, Oteri ends up spinning comedic gold from coal.
The role (just like every other in the movie) is extremely underwritten, and although there is little depth to the character, Oteri lifts this cut-out from the page and makes her the most interesting as well a total hoot. Oteri is a comedienne who's mere presence or her smallest gesture or expression can instigate big laughs. This, combined with some seriously killer comic timing, hilariously fresh line readings, and she's adorned with some pretty funny '80s warbrobe/makeup which makes Oteri's Keller a genuinely delightful treat.
Oteri establishes three main tracks in which she uses Ms. Heller's distress/pleasure to make for some high hilarity.
Whether she's having a little kinky foreplay with her dearly beloved....
....or panicking over the missing evidence....
....or just being a plain dimwitt...she's right on the money.
In fact, her ability to play dumb so well makes the character the perfect accomplice to Levy's wiser sleazebag. Ms. Heller is not a smart criminal at all -- she's mostly a goofball who's just in a coup with her "monkey" -- and even though she is broadly written that way, Oteri (even with her boundless energy) never goes over the edge with her broad caricature. 
Oteri gives the kind of performance that "steals" the movie, although she works seamlessly with Levy to generate some real belly laughs. She's the supporting actress you just cannot wait to see pop back on the screen again. It's the kind of overlooked work that happened to be in a film that, well, let's just say wasn't reviewed to well by the critics or public.
But that Cheri Oteri, in this little Friday-night-flick, uses her full set of gifts as a comedienne to elevate the light material and create a memorable character in the process, is somethin' awesome.
Click here to watch her performance!
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