Avis Metacritic

Polyester is a liberatingly crude satire of suburban mores.

Long before Mel Brooks, trash aesthete John Waters was making movies dedicated to the proposition that life stinks.

Polyester is not Mr. Waters's ordinary movie. It's a very funny one, with a hip, stylized humor that extends beyond the usual limitations of his outlook.

A rancidly hilarious slice of Americana. [01 Jun 1981, p.91]

Waters uses the tawdry in satirical celebration of itself - he's the red satin tassled plush pillow of filmmaking. [17 Sep 1981]

Polyester isn’t quite up to the low standards of Pink Flamingos, but it’s still a worthy effort by Waters.

The new film, a fitfully amusing and perfectly harmless spoof of the morbid and masochistic cliches that sustain the typical soap opera, represents a mellow, spruced-up turn toward the mainstream. [06 Jul 1981, p.C3]

Likely to be criticised for being less than murky Waters, even with its 'Odorama' card to scratch for olfactory pleasures/displeasures; but then it's clear from an opening helicopter shot that bad taste has found the budget to go middle of the road.

A fitfully amusing comedy of not so ordinary people.

The biting satire and absurd situations in Waters' movies always dwell self-consciously on how media images and stereotypes affect viewers' notions of reality. Polyester is much more cliche-ridden than his other films, however, and so is less successful as satire.