I can't begin to tell you the depth of feeling I have for American country superstar Dolly Parton, but I'll give it a red-hot go.

Back in the late 70s, as a wee thing my grandmother used to pay me a dollar to sing her Dolly's Coat of Many Colours, which being my favourite song I would gladly have done for free.

Through each of Dolly's phases, she's given us more to love, from her Baby I'm Burning disco era to her lucrative loaning of I Will Always Love You to Whitney Houston, and more seriously, her Kentucky Bluegrass stuff, which gives me chills.

More than that though, she throws her money into children's literature, she funded one of the COVID vaccines and she even funds the theme park Dollywood that is one of the biggest employers in her Tennessee home.

So I was going to love Gracie Otto's new Aussie film Seriously Red, being about a woman who throws it all in to become a Dolly Parton impersonator.

Gracie is the daughter of Strictly Ballroom's Barry Otto, sister to the actress Miranda, and she has been developing her directing chops on Australian-produced television Bump and The Other Guy as well as a handful of documentaries.

Raylene Delaney (Krew Boylan), also known as Red, works in real estate insurance, and not very well.

Invited to a shindig she assumed was a costume party, Red arrives dressed as Dolly Parton, and takes the stage for a bit of karaoke 9 to 5, encouraged by the resident Elvis impersonator (Rose Byrne).

It's here she catches the eye of the manager of a celebrity impersonator company (Celeste Barber) who offers her a job, not one she initially wants but when she is fired from her real estate gig, and is shamed by her mother (Jean Kitson), she tries to make a go of it.

Red has to win over Wilson (Bobby Cannavale) to score a career-making tour with a celebrity Kenny Rogers impersonator (Daniel Webber).

We've enjoyed a heap of jukebox-style films in recent years - Yesterday with the music of the Beatles, Gurinder Chadha's Bruce Springsteen-inspired Blinded By the Light, and of course the Mamma Mia! films making ABBA even more money.

Otto developed this film with the blessing of Dolly herself, secured through some of actress Rose Byrne's Hollywood contacts.

Byrne not only executive produces the film, she also provides her boyfriend, American actor Bobby Cannavale, as a big-name drawcard.

There are some familiar local faces up on the screen, starting with comedian Jean Kitson as Red's mother, and Dannii Minogue playing a version of herself.

Star Krew Boylan wrote the screenplay which has a Muriel's Wedding feel to it, with a little Priscilla thrown in there too, and while every Australian film must be thoroughly sick of being compared to those two troublemakers, I'm referring to the exploration of one's own inner-self while pretending to be somebody else.

The film quotes Dolly, saying: "Find out who you are, and do it on purpose".

Boylan is an engaging performer and she constructs an unexpectedly wry heroine in Red, while Otto directs a sweet parfait of a light comedy. It's not groundbreaking stuff, it's just fun.

But there is that wonderful Dolly music to bring it all together. Who doesn't love belting out 9 to 5 or Islands in the Stream in the car on the way home? Surely not just me.

That the filmmakers managed to pull the film together across the world's various COVID shutdowns and awkwardness is impressive.