Remains to be Scene

Polly Pepper is a living legend, complete with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. With her brilliant comic timing, she could send audiences into tearful hysterics with even the lamest rubber chicken joke. But that was thirty years ago. Those glory days are now as faded as her sequined jumpsuits from the '90s. Really, would it kill someone to offer her a decent role? Apparently so, because the untimely death of character actress Trixie Wilder opens up a part in the new teen movie musical Detention Rules! for Polly. But the catch? She'll be playing (gulp) a grandmother! Insulted? You bet!

But before Polly can say, "pass the prune juice," her showbiz arch-rival, Sedra Stone, swipes the role right from under her nose, just as she'd previously stolen Polly's first husband... and her second one, too! But sinister Sedra's clutch on the prize is short-lived because she winds dead after falling from a diving platform into an empty swimming pool. Polly suspects it was murder!

Stepping into Sedra's vacated orthopedic shoes, Polly quickly discovers that many on the set of Detention Rules! weren't all that upset to see Sedra permanently fade to black. In fact, the cast of potential murder suspects is longer than the waiting list for a Beverly Hills plastic surgeon. There's Dana Abbott, the teen mean girl nymphomaniac, who has her hormones set on Jack Wesley, the sexy singer-turned-bad-boy-actor. And it seems Jack was making some nightly career moves of his own with Sedra. Or how about Hollywood darling Missie Miller, a straight-A Harvard freshman living at home to care for her nearly blind mother, who was overheard telling Sedra, "Drop dead, Paleolithic relic," just before she did exactly that.

Now it's up to Polly Pepper, along with her adorable adult-but-still-living-at-home son Tim and their sassy-but-wise maid Tiara to see to it that someone will be starring in a real-life drama tentatively titled Life Without Parole!