Academy Award Nominee Holly Hunter, the hellcat from Broadcast News, is sensational as Carnelle Scott, a catfish-factory worker from Yazoo City, Mississippi, whose rep as the town slut can’t stop her dream to win the local Miss Firecracker Beauty Pageant.

Orphaned at eight, she was raised by her two spoiled first cousins. The well-mannered Elaine – a beguilingly bitchy Mary Steenburgen – is a former Miss Firecracker who would rather not see her scraggly cousin succeed. Cousin Delmount, played with tickling humour by Academy Award Winner Tim Robbins, has just been sprung from an asylum, and he’s eager to sell the decrepit family mansion Carnelle still calls home.

Delmount treats the local belles like dogs, but succumbs to a salt-of-the-earth black seamstress named Popeye (the glorious Academy Award Nominee Alfre Woodard) who claims, “He makes my heart hot.” Author Beth Henley’s antic humour carries the day for her characters; lively loons who laugh to keep from toppling into the abyss. Miss Firecracker is a spirited lark that is shot through with enchantment.