CECIL B. DEMENTED
There are laughs here and there, but on the whole John Waters satirical joke about “guerrilla filmmaking” is disappointing and surprisingly crude.Running time: 88 minutes; Rated R. At the Angelika, Houston and Mercer streets.
IT’S sad to report that the only remotely shocking thing about the latest movie by provocative “Pink Flamingos” auteur John Waters is the heavy-handedness of its humor and the blunt ineffectiveness of its diatribes against the excesses of Hollywood.
There are some decent jokes (how could there not be in a Waters movie?), but they are too few and far between and some of the most obvious ones are dragged on for so long or so many times that they die of exhaustion.
Somehow the movie’s contemporary setting (Waters is so much better in the ’50s – viz “Cry Baby” and “Hairspray”) and close-to-the-bone subject matter – filmmaking and radical activism – seems to have blunted Waters’ justly famous wit.
Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff) is both guerrilla filmmaker and a filmmaking guerrilla: He’d kill to make a film – one with the integrity of art.
As part of his ruthless do-or-die campaign against Hollywood awfulness, he kidnaps spoiled movie star Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith) from a Baltimore premiere.
Cecil wants her to star in the no-budget film he’s making of various gun-and-grenade terrorist attacks he and his cult-like gang, “the Sprocket Holes,” commit in Baltimore against such targets as a shopping mall theater and a party given by the Maryland Film Commission.
All of the gang members, including the former porno star Cherish (Alicia Witt) and the drug-obsessed Lyle (Adrien Grenier), are tattooed with the names of cineaste heroes like Fassbinder, Sam Fuller, Warhol (and, more surprisingly, Almodovar) and have taken a vow of chastity until the film is completed.
At first Honey resists, but after the media make mean remarks about her appearance, Honey begins to do a Patty Hearst (who has a cameo in the movie) and to buy into Cecil’s beliefs.
The action scenes are appallingly choreographed and shot. The acting often goes over the top – partly because all the characters, if you can call them that, seem to be just mouthpieces for Waters himself.
