Like the ad says, Drowning Mona "isn't so much a whodunnit, as a who didn't." Bette Midler plays Mona Dearly, an untamable shrew of a wife to catatonic battered husband Phil (William Fichtner) and mother of beer-swilling degenerate son Jeff (Marcus Thomas). Though her family is nothing to be proud of, Mona is so relentlessly obnoxious she makes Roseanne look like Mary Poppins. Not surprisingly, no one in their tiny Hudson riverside town of Verplanck, New York seems to care when Mona mysteriously looses control of her Yugo and is killed when the car crashes into the river. "Ding dong the witch is dead" is how Deputy Feegee (Peter Dobson) sums up the case – and his interest in solving it. A few degrees more warmhearted and devoted to duty is Sheriff Wyatt Rash (Danny Devito) who, though more experienced at naming Broadway show tunes than at solving actual crimes, feels a moral obligation to solve the case when he finds that Mona's car had been "fixed to kill" with cut brake lines and punctured fluid tanks.

Though most everyone in Verplanck had good reason for murdering Mona, the most obvious and nervous suspects are her beleaguered husband, his mistress Rona (Jamie Lee Curtis) – a tough talking waitress in aviator shades and black high-top sneakers – and Mona's son's business partner Bobby (Casey Affleck), whose quiet goodness was constantly bullied by Mona and the Dearlys. Considering Mona's extensive enemy list, another question that comes to mind along with whodunnit is what took them so long?

The nostalgia of seeing Midler, Devito and Curtis working together again is practically worth the price of admission alone. Midler is more than up to the task of playing a less than divine character. She somehow manages to be at once horrifying and hilarious. I thought characters this odious only existed in John Waters' movies. Devito's Sheriff Rash is more sympathetic than his usual cigar-chomping tough guy. He also doesn't seem to have aged a day since starring in "Taxi" more than twenty years ago. Alas, the years haven't been as kind to Ms. Curtis, though her comic timing is as sharp as ever and she still has an aerobic instructor's physique, her face is so weathered, she could be the new Marlboro woman. One of Drowning Mona’s funniest moments occurs when Jamie's character Rona is packing to leave town, before the Sheriff makes any "Rash" accusations. Rona tells her boyfriend Phil, "I'm a 33-year-old waitress at a diner that doesn't encourage tipping." The look on Phil's face at the idea of Rona being so youthful is worth the other half of admission. Later it turns out that there's more fuel in Rona's furnace than expected when it's revealed that she is also having an affair with Phil's son Jeff. My how family fun has changed!

Neve Campbell makes the most of her role as Ellen Rash, Devito's daughter, as can be made. Though the bodies do start piling up, Campbell for once is not on the murderer's menu and is not once asked what her favorite scary movie is. One unintentional bit of humor is how Neve slips in and out of a fake "New Yawk" accent. (Such misuse of the language is an insult to people who talk good everywhere!)

One detail that the producers did maximize is the exclusive use of the Yugo as the official car of Verplanck. Drowning Mona starts with a statement about the town being used as a test market by the tiny car company (though that's another story, we're told) and indeed no other autos, including the police cars are anything but Yugos. It's an interesting touch of weirdness and is based on an experience that director Nick Gomez had in college when he was working on a commercial set in a small town on the Hudson where practically everyone drove these odd little vehicles. It just proves that truth might not be stranger than fiction, but it can still be pretty damned odd.

And odd is what Drowning Mona is all about. It's an odd comedy about a very bad thing that happens to a very bad person at the hands of a very good person who would ordinarily never do such a very bad thing. Oh, yes, and best of all, it's funny too. True, Midler and company have all done better, but not since Ronald Reagan was meandering around the oval office. Drowning Mona won't solve the world's problems, but it will take your mind off of them for awhile and have you home in time for "Seinfeld." All right Bette, Yugo girl!