Ana Gasteyer Movies

An overachieving good girl, a sexually confused outsider, and a rich kid hiding behind his bad-boy persona unexpectedly find their lives colliding during their last semester of high school. Alexa (Emmy Rossum) may get good grades, but she longs to get her nose out of the textbooks and experience life. Meanwhile, melancholy teen Ben (Ashley Springer) wrestles with his sexuality, and good-looking rich kid Johnny (Zach Gilford) realizes that he can't maintain his bad-boy image forever. As their lives slowly converge, it becomes ever more apparent that they have little to rebel against other than their own self-imposed inhibitions. Ana Gasteyer, Alan Cumming, and Sandra Bernhard co-star. ~ Jason Buchanan, Rovi

The made-for-cable musical satire Reefer Madness is based on the award-winning play of the same name, which in turn was inspired by the notorious -- and deliciously awful -- 1936 anti-marijuana film originally titled Tell Your Children. A smarmy lecturer (Alan Cumming in the first of his three roles in the film) arrives in a typical small town of the late '30s to warn the populace of the dangers of the "evil weed," bringing along a lurid propaganda film to dramatize his message. In broad, unsubtle, and hilarious strokes, the movie-within-a-movie shows how even a squeaky-clean pair of highschoolers named Mary Lane (Kristen Bell) and Jimmy Harper (Christian Campbell) can become hopeless dope addicts by succumbing to the lure of marijuana. Reefer Madness is not only a savage skewering of the original black-and-white movie (some of the musical's campiest lines are taken directly from the earlier script!), but also a devastating attack on what playwrights Kevin Murphy and Dan Studney consider to be the real reason that the 1936 movie was made: to frighten the public out of their wits in order to keep them under the thumb of an oppressive government. Thus, the musical manages to take a number of not-so-veiled swipes at xenophobia, racism, McCarthyism, the Bush Administration's Homeland Security policy, and even the recent FCC clampdown on "offensive" TV fare (one of the film's highlights is a garish nightclub number featuring Jesus Christ). The ebulliently staged songs include "The Stuff," "Down at the Ol' Five and Dime," "Lonely Pew," "Listen to Jesus Jimmy," "Mary Jane/Mary Lane," "The Brownie Song," "Tell 'Em the Truth," and the title number. Officially titled Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical, this film first aired April 16, 2005, on the Showtime cable service. ~ Hal Erickson, Rovi

In the first episode of a three-part story, Niles (David Hyde Pierce) becomes convinced that his toothache is merely a "referred pain," and that he may actually have a heart condition. Well, maybe he didn't have one at the beginning of the episode, but he sure has one by fade-out time -- and it may all be the result of his own feverish imagination. Elsewhere, Frasier (Kelsey Grammer) has a bad feeing about the "terrific" new caregiver (Ana Gasteyer) hired by Martin (John Mahoney). ~ Rovi

Hawaiian surfer dudes Stew (Steve Van Wormer) and Phil Deedle (Paul Walker), fraternal twins, are about to be expelled from school, so their wealthy and concerned father (Eric Braeden) offers summer camp in Wyoming as a solution. Arriving in Jackson Hole with their wet suits, the Deedle twins are like fish out of water, and a series of accidents put them in a hospital. Mistaken for new recruits by Yellowstone Park ranger Capt. Pine (Douglas Ashton), the duo go along with the error after meeting their training officer, the attractive Lt. Jesse Ryan (A.J. Langer), but they are unprepared to adapt to life in the wild, as they cope with mountainside rappelling, sleeping in tents, eating worms, and dealing with hordes of prairie dogs unleashed by ex-ranger Frank Slater (Dennis Hopper), who seeks vengeance for his past problems in the park. There are several pop-culture references, including a cameo by Bart the Bear (of The Edge). ~ Bhob Stewart, Rovi