While it might be a tad simplistic to state that every John Waters film is, at heart, exactly the same, Polyester certainly shares fundamental similarities to many of the director’s prior and subsequent offerings. Waters’ 1981 freak-a-thon was “filmed in Oderama,” meaning that, during its initial theatrical release, moviegoers were provided scratch-and-sniff cards to use at prompts throughout the film. While enjoying the film on DVD doesn’t afford such odorous participation (one is simply left to imagine the stench of farts and skunks), this swift 86-minute farce still serves up plenty of nasty fun. Divine is the alcoholic matriarch of a supremely dysfunctional family that includes an adulterous porn theater-owning husband, a son whose foot fetish compels him to stomp on women’s toes, and a floozy daughter looking forward to having an abortion. Toss in Divine’s best friend Cuddles (Edith Massey) – a retarded former maid who, after inheriting a fortune, is driven around by a German chauffeur in a limousine and is planning a debutante ball for herself – and you’ve got a typical Waters three-ring circus. The film’s gross-out outrageousness aims to skewer the “normalcy” of suburban-dwelling nuclear families, and bits involving Divine’s picnic in the country and a disastrous robbery that proves fatal for her money-grubbing mother keep the goofy quotient high. Though it’s not Waters’ funniest or most accomplished effort, Polyester definitely stinks in all the right ways.
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