Citizen Ruth is a very funny film, all the funnier because Payne has cannily toned down the vaudeville to a couple of notches above reality.

The movie is a gallery of sharp-edged satiric portraits.

It's probably too schematic to reward more than a single viewing, but as a provocative one-time surprise it may become a specialized sleeper.

The movie's most charming characteristic is, in fact, its irreverence: It bears the tell-tale signs of a young director taking aim at, and then laughing off, the absurdities of the world he grew up in.