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Pecker
**
Cinema
Releases - February 5, 1999
Rated on a 4-star
scale. USA. Written and directed by John Waters. Starring
Edward Furlong, Christina
Ricci, Mark Joy, Mary Kay Place, Martha Plimpton, Brendan Sexton III, Lili
Taylor, Jean Schertler, Lauren Hulsey.
Everyone seems to know who Pecker is. As played
by Edward Furlong, the kid is a local celebrity in his Baltimore home town,
for taking incredibly odd photographs of whatever he can find -- be it sewer
rats having sex, the launderette his girlfriend works in, homeless people
annoying the manager of the local fast food joint or his best friend
shoplifting.
Pecker holds an exhibition of his pictures in
town, somehow attended by a prestigious talent agent, Rorey Wheeler (Lili
Taylor). Rorey takes a liking to Pecker and his work, and brings him to the
big city, where he's a hit with the pretentious art crowd.
We're in the world of cult director John Waters
here, the man who made "Pink Flamingos" and "Polyester". He pays a lot of
attention to oddly amusing little details, in much the same way Pecker chooses
his photographic subjects, and includes many other curios. Cameos, for example,
by such people as Patty Hearst, for no particular reason. Pecker's grandmother
using a statue of the Virgin Mary as a ventriloquist's dummy. And the credits
shaking to the beat of the opening song.
One of the lines in that song is "I can laugh
when things ain't funny... happy-go-lucky me!" I wish I could have had the
same attitude, and Waters probably intended the film to be taken that way,
but although the oddities are somewhat amusing, they don't add up to much.
"Pecker" is aimless, and although it's been described by some
as a satire... what does it think it's satirising? The film itself creates
the oddities of the small Baltimore community, so making fun of them is no
kind of satire of the real world. And although there are a few observant
scenes about the phoney art world, they show us nothing new, since that's
a society more or less beyond satire, no matter how ridiculous this movie
tries to portray it.
There are some nice moments, I suppose, but after
the first half-hour, the jokes start to repeat themselves. This gets especially
tiresome when the gags deal with how annoying the characters are. Waters's
own "Serial Mom" was a much wittier recent work set in Baltimore suburbia,
and although "Pecker" isn't a bad film, that's about as enthusiastic as I
can get.
COPYRIGHT© 1999 Ian
Waldron-Mantgani
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