TV Reviews : Showtime Dares a Madonna Spoof

Madonna is one of those ‘90s icons who already operates on such an advanced level of self-conscious irony that outside parody risks being superfluous. Still, anyone who saw her “Truth or Dare” rockumentary had to feel that her awesome self-importance isn’t just a knowing wink, and Madonna lovers and loathers alike will almost certainly enjoy having her taken down a few notches in the spoof “Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful,” a special airing Sunday at 10 p.m. on Showtime.

This may be the role comedian Julie Brown was born to play. With a wig, a set of conical bras and some ‘50s-ish eyeliner, she gets Madonna’s “Blonde Ambition” tour look just right. The mixture of pity-me vulnerability and power-wielding witchiness is beautifully achieved early on: “I’ve always been alone, really,” Medusa tells her surrounding entourage, waxing Marilyn-like while having her hair done backstage. “I’m still a frightened little girl alone in a rainstorm. . . . OW! YOU’RE FIRED!”

What Brown (who co-wrote with Charlie Coffey) doesn’t get right is Madonna’s unavoidable shrewdness. Brown usually plays a Valley Girl, and hasn’t got it out of her system here; while Madonna may be a lower-class refugee insecure about her intelligence, she’s anything but a ditz, which is where the satire rings untrue.

Still, Medusa’s sense of complete self-involvement is on-target, and you can enjoy Brown yelling at her tour manager (a cameo by Chris Elliott) that the stage set’s phallus isn’t big enough; grabbing her crotch as she attempts to rehearse Shakespeare; virtually begging the police to arrest her for public lewdness after a concert; derisively calling her ex-husband--named Shane Pencil--”Actorman,” and offering a gritty tour of her hometown (“There’s the phone booth where I lost my virginity”). Some of the gags misfire, but the ratio of riotous ones to groaners is well in the special’s funny favor.