Loosely adapted from Sandra Bernhard's smash off-Broadway show of the same name, this is a rollicking cabaret travelogue through three decades of pop culture and tabloid Americana led by our acid-tongued priestess of the blow-torch sensibility.
Acquiring a narrative backbone in the trip from stage to screen, a twist has the outrageous comedienne returning to her L.A. club roots at the behest of "manager" Ingrid Burns (Lu Leanord), who decides that making the New York "scene" has swelled her charge's head to eminently shrinkable proportions.
Thus exiled to The Parisian Room, Bernhard adopts a string of well-observed satirical stage personas, from the gauche astrology-obsessed lounge singer to the Upper East-side Chanel Lady who lunches with Liza, Truman and Bianca. Carpet bombing her act with uniquely Bernhard interpretations of pop ditties like her now legendary take on Prince's Little Red Corvette clad only in a spangled crotch patch Bernhard performs for a mostly black, completely apathetic audience who perk up no end when she abandons the stage for the talent-free Madonnaesque stripper Shoshanna (one of several not-so-subtle digs at Bernhard's ex-best friend).