I've said it more than once to listeners both agreeable and skeptical:

Jaime Pressly is a funny, funny woman.

To those of you My Name is Earl fans who are just now discovering the juicy talents of the perpetually sneering, eye-rolling, attitude machine known as Jaime Pressly, I'd recommend you check out her work in flicks like Ringmaster, Tomcats, Joe Dirt, Torque, and Not Another Teen Movie.

Basically, if we were giving out an award for "the consistently best thing in a series of generally atrocious comedies," Jaime would be walking home with that prize, no sweat. Regardless of how bad the movie is (and she's done some amazing stinkers; more on that in a minute), Jaime always seems like a kooky and kinetic cartoon character who somehow figured out how to become flesh & blood.

Yes, she's sexy and all that, but Jaime Pressly is also funny, and that just amplifies all her other assets. So while I'm happy to see the gal earn such effusive praise for her work on the Earl sitcom (nobody does "white trash" like Jaime does), it was with much apprehension that I approached the girl's newest movie.

Death to the Supermodels is, and I'm not exaggerating here, one of the stupidest, sloppiest, skankiest, and most amazingly unfunny comedies I've ever seen. It takes a special kind of talent to cast Jaime Pressly in a lead role that yields precisely Zero in the laughs department. Death to the Supermodels is as funny as a trip to the DMV while you have a fever of 102, a migraine headache, and fist-sized leeches resting in your crotch. The flick's not even funny by accident.

The plot sees Pressly as the coordinator of a fashion shoot with the world's five hottest models on a deserted island. Along for the ride are two gay men, a midget, and a lot of "wacky" sound effects. It's not long before the supermodels start getting themselves murdered, and Jaime's the lead suspect.

If you ever needed final proof positive that all it takes to get a DVD released is one "name" actor and a workable DVD cover, look no further. Here's the level of comedy you're getting: One of the models is so egotistical that she refuses to shave her armpits, secure in the knowledge that even her rampant body odor is like perfume to men. This set-up is followed by 80-some minutes of hairy armpits on a really hot blonde. And lots of b.o. jokes.

Another model, the black one of course, has a very bulky booty, which affords writer/director Joel Silverman ample opportunity to break out the fart noises. Also included are an Asian model called "Hoo Chi," a Latino girl who's bi-polar (oh, my sides), and a pair of mincing homosexual photographers who dole out limp-wrist "fag" schtick that had whiskers when Nixon was a baby.

This is a movie that thinks asking Jaime Pressly to dress up like Sharon Stone and parody her infamous Basic Instinct interrogation sequence is just brilliantly hilarious. Basic Instinct came out in 1992.

No lie; Schindler's List offers more laughs than does Death to the Supermodels. Like with 2005's Miss Cast Away and the Island Girls, Death to the Supermodels feels like something that was slapped together on somebody's company-paid vacation, with little to no attention paid on nominal stuff like acting performances, screenplay quality, or even the most basic tenets of "watchability." This movie feels like a freaking punishment, basically, and I've no idea what I did to deserve such anguish.

Not content to completely waste the talents of Jaime Pressly, Silverman also hired a veteran character actor / stand-up comedian named Taylor Negron to play one of his garish gay-boy stereotypes. And get this: The guy doesn't speak once in the whole movie. The one guy on the Supermodels set who actually has some real comic timing and tons of low-budget experience ... is not allowed to speak. It just boggles the mind. Negron's one of those "oh, I know that guy" supporting players, and he's almost always good for a few laughs. Not so in the hands of Mr. Silverman, director of the upcoming Surf School, starring Sisqo, Haylie Duff, and Harland Williams.

Can't wait.

The DVD

Video: It's an anamorphic widescreen (1.85:1) transfer. Picture quality is pretty solid, especially when the cameras are just artlessly plopped onto the beach and pointed at the hotties. Which is often.

Audio: Dolby Digital 5.1 English, with optional subtitles. But if ever there were a movie in which the Mute Button would help a lot, it's this one.

Extras: A pair of deleted scenes and some trailers for Black Dawn, Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo, Mirror Mask, Single White Female 2: The Psycho, Sueno, The Baxter, The Cave, USS Poseidon: The Phantom Below, and Wild Things: Diamonds in the Rough.

Final Thoughts

I challenge anyone even remotely associated with the production of Death to the Supermodels to sit down next to me on my movie-watching couch, spin the flick, and then tell me when and where I'm supposed to be laughing. You can use neon yellow semaphore flags if you think they'll help. The thing feels like it was written by a snickering 12-year-old, directed by a blind monkey, and released by a room full of executives who probably never made it past reel 2.