SERIOUSLY RED

Name: SERIOUSLY RED
Item: SERIOUSLY RED
Author: Gaby Gaduh

"Funny, Touching Lessons Marred by Negatives"

Content: -3 Excessive sex, violence, immorality, and/or worldview problems. (Sometimes excessive content such as violence is in otherwise redemptive movies.)

Entertainment Quality:

	None	Light	Moderate	Heavy
Language
Violence
Sex
Nudity

Credits →

What You Need To Know:

SERIOUSLY RED is a unique R-rated musical comedy from Australia about a woman who begins a career as a sassy Dolly Parton impersonator. Raylene is a realtor in Australia whose hair earns her the nickname ”Red.” Red is obsessed with Dolly Parton. After a work party goes wrong, Red gets an offer to become a professional Dolly Parton impersonator. She accepts, despite objections from her family and best friend. After becoming successful, she finds herself divided about who she wants to be: Dolly or Herself.

SERIOUSLY RED is very entertaining, funny and touching, with great music. Screenwriter Krew Boylan does a brilliant job as the title character. Also, Bobby Cannavale performs a great rendition of Neil Diamond’s “I Am, I Said.” SERIOUSLY RED has strong moral, pro-capitalist lessons. It urges people to be the best, most honest version of themselves and to exercise their natural gifts. However, this positive content is marred by strong foul language, explicit nudity, bedroom scenes, brief substance abuse, and scenes where men dress as female celebrities as well as male celebrities. So, MOVIEGUIDE® considers SERIOUSLY RED excessive.

Content:

(BB, CapCap, Ro, Ho, LL, V, SS, NN, AA, DD, MM):

Dominant Worldview and Other Worldview Content/Elements:

Strong moral worldview stressing honesty, being true to your true self and not letting your vocation prevent you from living life, but including some strong pro-capitalist elements about taking advantage of your gifts, with lessons about how it’s better to be yourself than someone you’re not, about moderating your personal obsessions with celebrities, and about how doing things just to feel good isn’t the best way to live your life, with one character thanking God in one line, marred by some Romantic elements where people give into their emotions and drink too much, plus there are a few images of drag queens, and some cross dressing in the movie’s scenes of men and women impersonating other people onstage (men also impersonate men and women impersonate women onstage but one man does an impersonation of Barbra Streisand onstage), and an Elvis impersonator seems effeminate and appears to be a woman underneath, but the movie never really confirms this one way or another

Foul Language:

13 obscenities (including two “f” words), two Jesus profanities, six light profanities, and two urinating scenes

Violence:

Two instances of light violence include a scene where the title character quits her job when she’s fired breaks some office objects and personal items in anger as she takes off, and woman hits an Elvis impersonator who’s upset that the woman took the impersonator’s MC job at a club for people who impersonate celebrities, especially singers

Sex:

Two briefly, partially depicted fornicating scenes, and implied fornication between an unmarried couple who decide to cohabit together at one point in the story, woman impersonating Dolly Parton takes an Elvis impersonator to her garage apartment, but a later flashback shows the Elvis impersonator insulting the woman’s small breasts so nothing happened other than the woman taking off her top, flashback shows a drunk woman at an office party grabbing people’s crotches, and an unmarried woman has a fight with her mother and stays at her male friend’s apartment for two or three days, and they hear moaning sex sounds coming from the couple in the next apartment

Nudity:

Images of upper female nudity in one bedroom scene when a woman takes off her top but her partner mocks her small breasts, and when a woman gets examined for possible breast implants, and when woman removes her clothes on stage to make a point, two images of rear female nudity when the woman removes her clothes onstage to make a point, a scene shows a man impersonating Kenny Rogers signing a woman’s halter top and bra when she takes off the halter top, images of upper male nudity, an image of rear male nudity during a brief and partial sex scene, and there’s a burlesque scene at on impersonators club where a woman lounges in a large champagne glass prop and has pasties over her breast nipples

Alcohol Use:

Some alcohol use and scenes in nightclubs where people perform, a flashback shows title character getting drunk at an office party, there is alcohol at two family dinner scenes, and title character seems to drink more wine than anyone else, including her longtime male friend

Smoking and/or Drug Use and Abuse:

Brief cigarette smoking, and there’s a scene where a show business manager rolls and smokes a marijuana cigarette;

Miscellaneous Immorality:

Strong miscellaneous immorality such as title character secretly goes through her live-in boyfriend’s personal things to find out more about him (he never shares his personal life or history and is always posing as his career persona, which is as a Kenny Rogers impersonator), title character’s mother is not supportive of her daughter, and this creates some tension between them, title character gets breast implants to be a better Dolly Parton impersonator, and red-haired title character gets jealous when her longtime male friend sows up with a younger-looking redhaired woman (it’s clear that the man is in love with his friend, but is too shy to discuss his feelings, partly because she seems to deliberately rebuff him every time he tries to get close).

More Detail:

SERIOUSLY RED is a unique R-rated musical comedy about an unmarried Australian woman who leaves her job and starts performing as a Dolly Parton impersonator but loses herself in the performance when she has a romance with a man who impersonates Kenny Rogers onstage and never breaks character offstage. SERIOUSLY RED is very entertaining, funny and touching, with some great music, but the movie’s moral, pro-capitalist lessons encouraging people to be the unique, best and most honest version of themselves and to exercise their natural gifts are marred by strong foul language, explicit nudity, bedroom scenes, brief substance abuse, and scenes where men dress as female celebrities as well as male celebrities.

Raylene is a red-haired realtor in Australia who doesn’t really fit into the 9 to 5 grind. Nicknamed Red, Raylene is mostly known for her love of Dolly Parton, which borders on obsession, and her disregard for authority. When she dresses and performs at an office party as Dolly, an impersonator agent approaches her and gives her a card. The next day, her boss tries to fire her because Red got drunk and started grabbing people inappropriately. “You can’t fire me, I quit,” she tells the boss.

Red goes to the agent and starts auditioning as a Dolly Parton impersonator. The “copy” scene includes men performing as female celebrities and women impersonating male celebrities as well as regular impersonators, including a man named Kenny who bills himself as the world’s best Kenny Rogers impersonator. Kenny goes all out and never breaks character.

Red takes to this world like a fish to water. She even begins a hot and heavy romance with Kenny and soon lives with him, taking his professional advice about committing 100% to her Dolly Parton impersonation.

Red takes her new life a little too far and decides to get breast implants. For the first time in her life, she finally starts gaining her mother’s support and respect. This isn’t because of the breast implants, but because her mother finally sees that her daughter has a real talent. However, her best friend, a man named Francis with a partially formed left arm who’s clearly in love with her, expresses his strong disappointment in her. “If you’re busy being someone else,” he asks, “who’s busy being you?”

Eventually, Red has to make a hard choice. Sacrifice her identity and become the best Dolly Parton impersonator she can be? Or, risk giving up her fabulous lifestyle and become the best Raylene she can be?

SERIOUSLY RED is a funny, entertaining, touching trip into 1980s nostalgia, and the people who wish to keep it alive. It’s a lot of fun watching Red become Dolly Parton and the friends she makes along the way. The movie has a lot of great Dolly Party songs, including songs being sung by Dolly Parton’s own voice and songs sung by Screenwriter Krew Boylan, who also plays Red. There’s also a great rendition of Neil Diamond’s “I Am, I Said” by Bobby Cannavale, who plays the manager of an international troop of celebrity impersonators. In addition, SERIOUSLY RED has many quotes form the irrepressible Dolly Parton, including one advising people not to be so caught up in working for a living that you forget to have a life.

SERIOUSLY RED has a strong moral worldview stressing honesty, being true to your true self, being the best version of yourself instead of a copy of someone else, and not letting your vocation prevent you from living life. Despite that last lesson, the movie has strong pro-capitalist elements about taking advantage of the gifts with which you were born, financially and career-wise. In fact, the movie ends with a nice scene promoting exactly that as well as some of the movie’s other positive lessons.

Sadly, however, SERIOUSLY RED is marred by strong foul language, explicit nudity, three bedroom scenes that go too far, pre-marital affairs, and brief substance abuse. The movie also has scenes where men dress as female celebrities and women dress as male celebrities, along with regular male and female celebrity impersonators. However, those scenes don’t overtly seem to push a woke, leftist agenda.

All in all, though, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution for SERIOUSLY RED. The movie’s female scriptwriter and director definitely could and should have made their movie more accessible to younger, broader audiences by making a few judicious cuts.

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