A Dirty Shame

I'm a follower of John Waters but this newest entry in the Baltimore auteur's canon is strictly for true blue fans - and even I kept thinking that his DVD commentary would be more interesting than the actual film. There are plenty of laughs in DIRTY, for sure. And Ullman is just as terrific as Kathleen Turner was in SERIAL MOM - hysterical! Johnny Knoxville and Chris Isaac do well, too. But half-way through the film, Waters abandons his well-cast characters in favor of a far-out concept that equates promiscuity with religious fervor. Therein lies the film's downfall. Ullman's personal plight (a concussion that causes her to become a sex fiend, much to the dismay of most of her family) is put on the back burner in favor of a larger canvas - just the same way that Cecil B. DeMented got lost in his kooky band of film misfits and shutterbug Pecker disappeared into the sycophantic New York art scene. The ultimate fadeout is confusing and unsatisfying but if you leave before the last half hour you might have time to rush to Blockbuster to rent DESPERATE LIVING, an earlier Waters cheapie that pushes many of the same buttons, but seems infinitely better.

I had fun watching this movie, but, it went on about the same thing forever. Never in my dedicated history of watching John Waters movies was I ever bored. (Incidentally, I haven't seen Cecil B. or Pecker) I could barely watch the last 1/2 hour of this. I kept wondering when it would finally be over.

I applaud this film maker for tackling taboo subjects. Ullman was good+ but, not performing her own material (where I believe she would have excelled).

It was fun and I'm thankful for something other than mindless dreck, but, it left me pining for "desperate living" and "female trouble" which had so much more to offer in the way of outlandish entertainment and featured no big stars (alright, several of them were reaaaally big)!

I miss cuddles.

Tracey Ullman does some priceless double-takes in this John Waters comedy, playing uptight wife and mother in a Baltimore suburb who gets a rap on the noggin and becomes a sex addict. A shabby-looking enterprise with scrappy editing, this would seem amateurish even for a first-time director, but Waters certainly doesn't seem to mind. As a filmmaker, he is gleefully puckish, with a heightened sense of the ridiculous, and as usual he gets his cast to ride right along on his coattails. Selma Blair is Ullman's daughter, who has "mutilated her mammaries"; Chris Isaak is Tracey's husband who also gets a knock on the head and dreams of musclemen posing; Johnny Knoxville is a sex guru/auto mechanic; Suzanne Shepherd is Ullman's mother, Big Ethel, who runs the Park and Pay. Relatively short film isn't compact (the final reel is just a lot of hamming and running around) but the first-half has some laugh-out-loud moments and the whole picture benefits from Ullman's work--she's a stitch. **1/2 from ****

A DIRTY SHAME is a good film but it certainly isn't for everyone. Of all the many films I have seen in my life, this one has (by far) the most pervasive sexuality of any movie--even more than in John Waters' early films. While there is not much nudity at all, I think only about 25 seconds of the film are not intended to be offensive by talking about perversions or showing them (at least in a sanitized manner). Like PINK FLAMINGOS, this film seems to be an experiment by John Waters to see how far he can go and get away with it. In this, case, he seems to be seeing how many sexual references and perversions he can include in a single film. However, given how much things have changed since the early 1970s, apparently you can go amazingly far! Of course, this could be because I saw the DVD version of the film (that is rated NC-17) and not the theatrical rated-R version.

The story is sort of like a fairy tale (or anti-Biblical morality play) set in a Baltimore suburb. In it, strange things happen when people have accidental head injuries--they become sex maniacs with their own particular type of perversion. Most any fetish or weird sex act you could imagine has someone in the town who recently switched to it. I could only think of a few weird sexual hangups that were not in the film and IMDb would probably ban me for even mentioning them or the ones in the film! This town, oddly, has two types of people--pervs and neuters. The neuters think all sex is bad and the pervs are running amok having sex with everything (even trees) and everywhere, even the local quickie mart(!).

When neuter Tracy Ullman receives her head injury, it's something special. The band of pervs leader announced that she is the chosen one--the one who will introduce some new form of perversion that has never been seen before. However, before she can find it, she is hit on the head again accidentally and becomes her old neuter self. It seems that accidental head trauma can make anyone switch back and forth--even Ullman's amazingly slutty daughter (who you just have to see to believe). Will Ullman regain her perversion and come up with the new sex act or will the revolution just fizzle out? Tune in and see.

The film is very funny but very raunchy. If you can watch John Waters' early films (PINK FLAMINGOS, MONDO TRASHO, DESPERATE LIVING or FEMALE TROUBLE), then you are probably a good candidate for the movie. If not, then it's an iffy proposition--this film is offensive in practically every way. If all the smuttiness were to be cut out, this film would be the length of a TV commercial. Seriously.

Oh, and by the way, for the fans of the old John Waters films, Mink Stole and Mary Vivian Pearce are both in this film--keep an eye out for them.

I can't say I've seen many of John Waters' films, but I've seen enough to get an idea of what he's about; and A Dirty Shame would appear to be a typical John Waters film. All of the jokes in the film come from sexual perversions, and it's not hard to see why a number of people don't like it - as if you thought Serial Mom was a difficult film to get along with, wait until you see this one! To be honest, I'm not completely sure of whether I liked it or not; on the one hand, I respect the director for daring to go further than many directors would dare...but on the other hand, it's amazingly silly and the central ideas behind the plot don't hold much weight. There are some really good one-liners in the film, however, and the surreal nature of the way the plot plays out is a delight. The story follows a prudish housewife named Silvia who hates sex, and the fact that her daughter is a sex symbol named 'Ursula Udders'. However, after hitting her head one day; she comes into contact with a man named Ray Ray, a 'sexual healer', and it's not long before she discovers that she is, in fact, a sex-addict.

I'm sure that the main reason why John Waters has so many fans is because of his willingness to take risks. This film is full of risks; some of which work. The cast list isn't typical, with popular American comedienne Tracey Ullman taking the lead role and performing well in the more lurid scenes. Selma Blair stars alongside an enormous pair of fake breasts, while there are support roles for the likes of Chris Isaak and Suzanna Shepherd. The biggest risk where the cast is concerned is undoubtedly Jackass' Johnny Knoxville, who is a lot better than you would think. Waters has seen fit to have a lot of scenes play out to music, and this works well some of the time. The way that certain words (such as 'Whore') pan out across the screen is good, but personally I didn't like the use of CGI. The film gets off to a really good start, and I laughed more in the first half hour than in any film I've seen recently; but it takes a bit of a downturn in the middle, and never fully recovers. The film is good because you never really know where Waters is going with it, and the full on orgy of the last twenty minutes is bound to divide audiences. Overall, this film is in extreme bad taste; but it's also a great laugh. However, if you haven't liked whatever Waters' films you've seen so far - I wouldn't recommend seeing this one.