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Very well executed

Let's be realistic.

Absolutely the worst movie.

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

This movie hasn't received the recognition it deserves. By far my favorite movie ever.

In a town full of "Yugo" cars, and mentally challenged residents, we find fertile ground for a terrific dark comedy. Bette Midler plays Mona, a monstrous woman everybody has a reason to hate. When her Yugo plunges into the lake due to foul play, no one seems to care that she is dead, and everyone is a suspect in "Drowning Mona". William Fichtner absolutely steals this movie, as Mona's "battered husband", who likes to play "Wheel of Fortune" with Jamie Lee Curtis. Meanwhile, Danny DeVito, as the sheriff, has plenty of suspects, including his future son-in law. If you enjoy "black comedies" like "Ruthless People" or "Eating Raoul", this is a must see, and comes highly recommended. - MERK

Any movie that kills off Bette Midler in the first reel can't be all bad. Unfortunately, "Laws of Gravity" director Nick Gomez's "Drowning Mona" makes the fatal mistake of letting her abrasive mommie dearest villainess encore in the flashbacks. Bette has seen better days and better movies, such as "The Rose" and "Ruthless People." Nevertheless, this low-brow, blue-collar, white-trash whodunit looks like a soggy retread of Billy Crystal's "Throw Momma From the Train," also starring Danny DeVito, where veteran battle axe actress Anne Ramsey took top honors as a malicious mom. Appreciating the tacky humor in this cheesy comedy requires an abysmal lack of taste."Be Cool" scenarist Peter Steinfeld scrapes the bottom of the barrel for buffoonery. The antics that unfold after a town of clueless cretins realizes that Mona Dearly didn't commit suicide when she plunged her automobile, a Yugo, into the Hudson River are mind-numbingly moronic. The town's lesbian mechanic, Lucinda (Kathleen Wihoite of "Nurse Betty"), shows Police Chief Wyatt Rush (Danny DeVito of "The Rainmaker") that somebody tampered with Mona's brakes. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to figure out that Mona's murder was a mistake or who tops the list as the prime suspect. Needlessly, Steinfeld complicates this murder mystery the same way that Agatha Christie did "Murder on the Orient Express." Chief Rash's problem is that everybody in the small Hudson Valley hamlet of Verplanck, New York, hated Mona. Even his own daughter, Ellen (Neve Campbell of "Wild Things"), implicates herself when she sings "Ding, Dong, the Witch is Dead!" Few of "Mona's" characters, except for Devito's amiable but pint-sized Andy of Mayberry cop, rate any sympathy. First, Mona herself is as obnoxious as an ogre. She chopped off the hand of her own son, Jeff (Marcus Thomas of "Cowboy Up"), when he tried to take a swig of her beer! Rumors about how Jeff lost his hand will either horrify you or have you howling in hilarious agony. Second, Jeff deserved his misfortune. As a partner in a local landscaping outfit, he sabotaged it by running their lawn mower over a customer's pet pooch. No, they don't show the poor dog getting ground down. Third, fearing the wrath of Mona, Jeff's wimpy partner, Bobby Calzone (Casey Affleck of "Gone, Baby, Gone"), doesn't have the guts to fire him. Fourth, Mona's own adulterous hubby, Phil Dearly (William Fichtner of "Armageddon"), complains about spousal abuse. In a cartoonish fit of rage, Mona brains him with a frying pan when she learns about his extramarital affair with a slutty waitress, Rona Mace (Jamie Lee Curtis of "Halloween"), at the local diner. Later, we learn that Rona has been banging Jeff, too! Nick Gomez, who also helmed "New Jersey Drive," lacks the knack for comedy. "Drowning Mona" tanks a quality cast as quickly as a Yugo can sink. The best joke here is that Verplanck, New York, served as a test market for Yugos, so everybody tools around in them, even the cops! Despite all its stars, "Downing Mona" deserves only one star for its rating.

I finally figured out why so many people consider this movie to be a piece of crap. It's a comedy about 'white trash' and the people who can't find humor in it are from that group of 'white trash'. They can't laugh at their own miserable existence, or even recognize it, so how can they catch the jokes in this movie? "That's your problem Phil, you don't think!" Morbid humor is far past the limited range these people have in their pea-brains. The side-line humor is endless in this movie. It never stops being hilarious. OH RONA is great, along with the super-intellect police, the influenced priest, and all the other side characters. So you 'white trash' limited ones out there, keep laughing at each others racist/sexist jokes and Jay Leno. People with brains more advanced than the New York Times can enjoy humor that requires some thinking, some memory, some intellectual analysis of the human condition, and so on. You people probably can't even get the humor in Dr. Strangelove.