Drowning Mona (2000)

When a woman drives a car into the river to her death, everyone in town becomes a suspect.

Director:

Nick Gomez

Writer:

Peter Steinfeld

Stars:

Danny DeVito, Bette Midler, Neve Campbell

1 nomination.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Danny DeVito	...	Chief Rash
Bette Midler	...	Mona Dearly
Neve Campbell	...	Ellen
Jamie Lee Curtis	...	Rona
Casey Affleck	...	Bobby
William Fichtner	...	Phil Dearly
Marcus Thomas	...	Jeff Dearly
Peter Dobson	...	Feege
Kathleen Wilhoite	...	Lucinda
Tracey Walter	...	Clarence
Will Ferrell	...	Cubby
Paul Ben-Victor	...	Carlucci
Paul Schulze	...	Jimmy D.
Mark Pellegrino	...	Murph
Raymond O'Connor	...	Father Tom

Storyline

Mona Dearly, a spiteful, loud-mouthed, unpopular woman, dies when the car she is driving plunges off a cliff and into a river near the small upstate New York town where she lives. Wyatt Rash, the local police chief, investigates and suspects foul play in Mona's death. The whole town is suspect, including Wyatt's daughter Ellen, who is about to marry landscape artist Bobby Calzone, whose business suffers from his lazy business partner, Jeff, Mona's slow-witted son, as well as waitress Rona Mace, who was having an affair with Mona's husband.

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Plot Keywords:

drowning | suspect | waitress | crying woman | lawn mower | 

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Taglines:

The death of Mona Dearly wasn't so much a whodunnit, as a who didn't.

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Genres:

Comedy | Crime | Mystery

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated PG-13 for some thematic elements, language and brief sexuality

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

3 March 2000 (USA)

Also Known As:

Qui a tué Mona?

Filming Locations:

Santa Clarita, California, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$6,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$5,802,229, 5 March 2000, Wide Release

Gross USA:

$15,427,192, 9 April 2000

Cumulative Worldwide Gross:

$747,934, 31 December 2000

Company Credits

Production Co:

Code Entertainment, Jersey Shore, Marigold Productions Inc.

Technical Specs

Runtime:

96 min

Sound Mix:

DTS Dolby Digital SDDS

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The first thing to appear on-screen is a little blurb about the Yugo car company using the town of Verplanck as a test area for their new model years ago. Every vehicle in town that is not a truck is a Yugo, except the police cruisers, which are Plymouth Horizons.

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Goofs

When the coroner first jumps into the water to check on Mona's dead body, he is neck deep in water. For the rest of the scene, he is dry from the waist up.

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Quotes

Jeff Dearly: Where's my car?
Deputy Jimmy D.: Well Jeff, it's a little bit more serious than you're car.
[pause]
Jeff Dearly: Would someone mind tellin me what the hell's goin on?
Deputy Tony Carlucci: Your mother drove her car into the lake Jeff, I'm afraid she's dead.
Jeff Dearly: What was she doing in my car?

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Connections

References Xanadu (1980)

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Soundtracks

Bury Me
Written by Derek Downham and Amy Millan
Performed by Amy Millan with Grindig
Courtesy of Blurtonia

User Reviews

This film is much better than the actors seem to think....

Why are people so hard on Drowning Mona? I just saw it and enjoyed it a lot. In years to come I believe it will be seen as the same genre as The Good Girl - an attempt to bring very ordinary people to life without apologizing for their ordinariness. In A Good Girl, Jennifer Aniston works very hard to portray an ordinary, poorly-educated young woman in a dead-end job. She has to really work hard to suppress the natural intelligence of a very bright mind and make her ordinary girl sufficiently dumb. But she does it beautifully. In Drowning Mona - portraying Bobby Calzone, Casey `Affleck has a similar challenge. I think he creates his character brilliantly. I am so shocked to find higher up this page that Casey is ashamed of his work on this movie. Can this be true? It seems quite possible - on my DVD package he is the only major cast-member who doesn't give an interview. Casey is handsome and delightful but he manages to leave an impression of terminal dumbness. All the guy wants is to make a reasonable living fixing gardens, but his problems seem insurmountable and it's getting to him. I get the feeling that none of the cast were stirred or excited with Drowning Mona - you need to see the on-set interviews to judge this. Nevertheless it is a successful little film in its own terms and has a lot of gentle humor in it. Affleck, deVito, Midler, Lee Curtis do a very professional ensemble piece as you would expect. As a former copywriter I find the landscaping company slogan hysterically funny: J & B Landscaping - `Yeah, we can do that'. I get the impression the whole cast read through a rather 'thin' script and said exactly that.