moonspinner55
Writer-director John Waters is back in Baltimore! Unfortunately, this cheeky spin on the Patty Hearst saga--wherein a Hollywood actress, kidnapped by a radical filmmaking group of punks, is forced at gunpoint to star in their underground movie--is all quick one-liners and no plot...and no pay-off (the third act being a sloppy free-for-all, a typical John Waters failing point). Melanie Griffith, dryly and amusingly resolved in the lead, acquits herself well here; she's surprisingly in tune with Waters' predictably gross sense of humor, but Waters himself never cuts loose. There's no sting in the comedy because the points he makes on the current state of cinema aren't points at all--just cute jabs in the ribs. *1/2 from ****
mmd
This is utterly hilarious - satire fun big time. I laughed my ass off so many times... Adequate actors, great acting within reason - it feels like the Comic Strip doing a Fassbinder parody. Well done. All of the fun poked at the film industry and its surroundings, circumstances, people, ways of doing things etc. is just so over the top you just got to love it. Of course, it's some kind of statement or else it wouldn't be John Waters (remember "Pink Flamingos"?). I leave it to you to figure out all the innuendos and discuss them from an intellectual point of view - have fun! As of me, I enjoyed the film (at least, we had a giggle) and recommend it as such to everyone with some sort of substantiated background, an appreciation for the bizarre, and a general sense of off-color humour.
Scarecrow-88
Hollywood's aging star Honey Whitlock(Melanie Griffith, who seems like she was born to star in a John Waters flick)is kidnapped by "cinema terrorists" with director Cecil B Demented(Stephen Dorff)head honcho behind the whole ordeal. Honey is to star in his underground film which is shot on the streets completely devoid of the studio system. The whole point behind the anarchy of Demented and his group is to pointedly bitch-slap the establishment in the face, by any means necessary. Unfortunately Baltimore will be the target of their crusade and Honey becomes a cult hero as a media circus develops. The police make it their mission to bring down Demented. The crew of this film range from a porn star(who claims she was molested by her entire family underneath the Christmas tree)to a Satanist(who gulps down goat urine), but they are extreme fans of cinema and believe the system Hollywood is backing needs a revolution. Demented's film is aimed as the start of the evolution of a new artform. Soon violence erupts as a result of his raw film-making style(they attack a theater showing the director's cut of PATCH ADAMS;and a stand-off with police during a riot of a Maryland Film Commission luncheon). As the film continues, Honey has a change of heart regarding her captors once she realizes that Cecil is behind her new rise in popularity.Grows more and more absurd as the Waters' film continues(Honey leaps off a building landing on her feet below;Honey sets her hair on fire for Cecil)such as Demented and company raiding the set of a FORREST GUMP sequel starring Kevin Nealon(!)resulting in a gunfight with teamsters! There's an inspired chase into a porno theater where Cherish(Alicia Witt)gets seats for her group in a film starring her as the remaining teamsters find themselves against an army of pervs! There's even a chase into an action flick where Demented calls on the fans of the theater to assist them against a pack of spiteful mothers from a grocery store(!) who hate what the cinema terrorists are doing to their youth. The film is as demented as the title character who is willing to burn himself alive in a wheelchair for his film!
fedor8
Has Waters succeeded in his quest to finally make a good movie? The answer is a predictable and resounding "no".And don't you fall into the trap that he doesn't want to make a "conventional" high-quality movie. Like all outcasts and misfits (I'm not referring to his homosexuality, all you "Homophobia" PC Police spies) he only PRETENDS to revel in making garbage. (Garbage is all he CAN do, so what choice does he have?) Secretly, deep inside him, there is a lonely, ambitious, and quite normal boy who wants to be just as good as Kubrick, Fincher or the Coens. Alas, when you lack even the minimum amount of talent required...So, knowing that he can't match any of the masters - not even enough to get one of his fingers on the Hollywood Walk Of Infamy - he indulges in being the "rebel". Many misfits go the rebel route: whether it be punk music, hippy crap, or "maverick" cinema. Anything to get attention.("Maverick cinema": the area of movie la-la land often inhabited by lesser talents who scream for attention by being "outrageous" because no-one would notice them if they placed their unskilled hands at something worthwhile.) A largely crap cast in a badly written and even more badly directed crap film. It's John Waters, that untalented (and pretending to be proud of it) indie director, so it's no shock.ONCE AGAIN Waters tries his clumsy hand at satire, a genre which he neither understands nor is capable of doing in his wildest dreams. Satire is at its best when it's subtle, not to mention clever - and not to mention funny, but Waters once again takes a stab at it with the subtlety of a sledgehammer.His attack on mainstream Hollywood is to an extent in order - but look where it's coming from: from the gay/transvestite/indie/porn/trash-for-the-sake-of-it scene which totally overestimates itself while ignoring the obvious fact that while Hollywood does turn out big amounts of filmic garbage every year, it also produces a couple of gems now and then.Waters ridiculing Hollywood is a bit like Ted Bundy complaining that Hitler was a genocidal psychopath.What about the indie scene? (And I mean the very low-budget type.) While a lot of its movies are watchable, very rarely do they come up with a great film, and in spite of the fact that hundreds, even 1000s, are being dumped into the internet and seedy cinemas every year. Most of these movies delve in clichés, trite PC characters, and most of them are about meaningless relationships between very boring people and their uneventful environments.Don't get me wrong: I'm not anti-gay, and I even find Waters likable as a person, i.e. the way he presents himself in interviews, but affability is a very long way away from making him a great director.To see just how pathetic Waters's taste in movies is, he shows us by the way of tattoos of various directors on the arms of the "cinema terrorists" who kidnap Griffith (all supposedly representing the true independent directors through the ages): Spike Lee, Sam Fuller, Otto Preminger, Passolini, and a few others. What a sad bunch. Not a single one of these dolts belongs on the directorial Olymp, and - obviously/predictably - some of them have to be gay. Kubrick's greatest mistake was not being gay, otherwise he too wouild have had the honour/privilege of being featured as a tattoo on one of Waters's retarded "terrorists".You wouldn't expect Waters to worship Kubrick, Scorsese, or Fincher, now would you. Waters makes fun of "Patch Adams" and "Forrest Gump", which is to be encouraged, but these are easy targets to ridicule, and he does so in an inept, dull manner. Besides, the alternative he offers us - though quite different - isn't any better: just look at his movies! Waters hasn't made a single mediocre movie yet, and I mean that in the reverse sense, of course: he has yet to RISE to the "elusive heights" of mediocrity, for even that seems like an unattainable goal for him. His films are plain AWFUL.The gags are dumb, the humour is beyond "America Pie"-level. The acting is manic, amateurish, and well... wateresque. Another "water constant" is that all his flicks start off bad, and then get progressively worse. The script seems to melt away as the time passes in a Waters movie; things get even unfunnier, even dumber, and even more manic. If you enjoy French banana-peel comedy, you might disagree...The cast is "blah": Griffith, Dorff, Witt. I can understand why unknown actors would snatch a chance to appear in a Waters film (i.e. any film), but there is no excuse for any of the more or less established faces to appear here: every single actor who says "yes" to starring in a Waters movie is a complete and utter moron - no "ifs" and "buts" about it. Did they actually think they were improving their CVs by working with "yet another master"? How clueless can you get...
