‘Seriously Red’ Film Review: Shy Woman Becomes Her Best Self by Impersonating Dolly Parton

SXSW 2022: Krew Boylan co-writes and stars in this insightful comedy about becoming yourself by pretending to be someone else

Seriously Red
Kane Skennar/SXSW

Dolly Parton is a great American, but she’s big in Australia, too, and she means the world to the heroine of “Seriously Red,” a deceptively modest vehicle for Krew Boylan, who plays the lead here and also wrote the script.

What starts out as a crowd-pleaser about an awkward woman who becomes a Dolly impersonator gradually reveals itself as a fairly serious examination of how confidence can be gained through such impersonation, but only up to a point.

Boylan and her director Gracie Otto (the 2021 documentary “Under the Volcano”) truly love Parton, and “Seriously Red” is studded with Dolly quotes, both in dialogue form and in on-screen title cards.

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