Shockingly obvious filmmaking from a usually eccentric and unpredictable iconoclast, Pecker is arguably director John Waters’ worst film. A transparent, laugh-free parable about Waters’ own rise to fame, the film charts the unlikely superstardom of Edward Furlong’s titular schlub, an aspiring Baltimore photographer whose life becomes front-page news after his photos of his family, friends, and the city’s weirdoes and degenerates are made famous by New York art snobs. Pecker’s loving portraits of the city’s misfit population are usurped by big-city intellectuals who condescendingly embrace his snapshots and declare him a genius, and Waters means to critique those who have patronizingly embraced his own freak-filled films for the wrong reasons. Yet this comedy’s attempts at gross-out zaniness and bourgeoisie-bashing barbs (a shot of two rats humping; male strippers tea-bagging eager club customers; jokes about the Virgin Mary; Pecker’s wink-wink name) are mostly tame and desperate; the cast – including Christina Ricci, Lilli Taylor and cameos from Mink Stole and Patty Hearst – is generally awful (especially Furlong, who belts out his lines like an overeager five-year-old); and the lifeless plot’s pervasive irony and camp is more exhausting than energizing. Pecker’s art-world reprimand feels like a tepid scolding rather than an inspired rant, and amidst all the second-rate gags and go-nowhere scenes, it was depressing to discover not a single flash of Waters’ classic, uninhibited mischievousness.
Oh, pick one grade.
Martha Plimpton was in that, as the gay strip club bartender, no?
Furlong is such a whiney ho ... I can't stand him in anything, least of all Terminator 2.
Posted by: Joe Grossberg | September 08, 2004 at 11:40 AM
You're right - equivicating about the grade is weak. It's now changed.
Yes, Plimpton was the gay strip club's bartender, and she's ok in it. But Furlong (though I don't share your hatred of T2), is terrible. Thank goodness his career seems to have gone into the tank after that KISS-tribute film Detroit Rock City.....
Posted by: Nick | September 08, 2004 at 11:45 AM
Haha ... speaking of "going into the tank": http://www.nypost.com/seven/09172004/gossip/pagesix.htm
Posted by: Joe Grossberg | September 17, 2004 at 02:28 PM
That's ridiculous. It's nice to see Furlong being productive....
Posted by: Nick | September 17, 2004 at 11:19 PM
you are the biggest pauline kael wannabe.....ever.
Posted by: | May 10, 2005 at 11:45 PM