Cecil B. Demented (2000)

That was an excellent one.

Good concept, poorly executed.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

This movie feels like it was made purely to piss off people who want good shows

That's basically my reaction to the ending. So that's it?"A lot of pointlessness that thinks it's funnier than it is" makes up most of this film. There were a few points where I laughed, a few where I smiled, but it isn't a good movie and doesn't even make a good point. It's just a bunch of people doing scenes that don't really fit well together. It's not a coherent story, and it's not really a coherent movie; it's not even a cohesive artistic statement, because it's all over the place. There's nothing in it that you can pick out from all of the chaos.And that's a shame, because the photography is good. The actors are good. I wanted to like the movie, just as I wanted to like the characters. But it tries too hard to be likable and fails even harder for when it succeeds. It uses people's horrible deaths as punchlines, but it doesn't keep up that tone, it just expects us to laugh when that turns up out of nowhere. It's not funny, and there's not a skillful balance of the heavy and the light, so it ends up being a depressing, pointless, incoherent slog of nothing much. If you have a laugh, it's going to be followed up at some "unexpected" turn by something horrific and depressing. Except it becomes incredibly predictable after the first time, so much that you could set your clock by how invariably it happens every time.By the end, it's very tiring. You're ready for it to be over, and it considerably overstays its welcome. There really wasn't any way it could have ended well, but especially not with such a poorly-written story and not very good direction. The photography was about the only thing well-directed about it. This is, put simply, a bad movie. That doesn't mean it's without its charm or good points. It just means that it is not, by any stretch of the imagination, well-made, well-presented, or a work possessing any particular level of quality or excellence.Evidently, I'm not the kind of person who likes John Waters. I don't believe he's some kind of brilliant creator, just someone following his urges and making films he wants to make. If he likes them, then that's probably enough for him, and that's good; some artists are like that. It doesn't make it a good movie, though, and it makes the constant references to other "artiste" filmmakers all the more annoying, as if they're supposed to lend this gravitas or hilarity. They don't. I just want to watch a Pasolini film instead of this. I'd almost rather watch Fassbinder, except he's about as depressing and difficult to like.And I'll admit, I didn't like all of Pasolini's films either, and I don't think he's for everyone. I'm just not sure this film was for anyone. It's essentially meaningless, and it's unbelievable at every turn, yet it doesn't engage in the kind of fantasy that becomes wondrous or makes the audience want to be a part of it. It's just implausibly miserable and stupid, and that, to me, is worthy of contempt.As much as I liked Melanie Griffith in this, and as much as I do think it shows her natural charisma as an actress, I couldn't find it in me to like the movie. Aside from a few jokes that you could easily edit down into a five-minute clip video, it's not worth watching this. And the jokes are so obvious and out-of-place that you would miss nothing by seeing them without any buildup or context, because there's no buildup or context when they appear in the movie itself.It's a pity they didn't play the song "Is That All There Is?" at the end. That would've at least been witty.

Writer-director John Waters is back in Baltimore! Unfortunately, this cheeky spin on the Patty Hearst saga--wherein a Hollywood actress, kidnapped by a radical filmmaking group of punks, is forced at gunpoint to star in their underground movie--is all quick one-liners and no plot...and no pay-off (the third act being a sloppy free-for-all, a typical John Waters failing point). Melanie Griffith, dryly and amusingly resolved in the lead, acquits herself well here; she's surprisingly in tune with Waters' predictably gross sense of humor, but Waters himself never cuts loose. There's no sting in the comedy because the points he makes on the current state of cinema aren't points at all--just cute jabs in the ribs. *1/2 from ****

John Waters continues his slow and steady seduction of the mainstream with the first half of the movie, only to reward its arousal by slamming a giant butt plug thru the finale. How many ways can one director demonstrate how much they hate the Hollywood machine, by mimicking it with all the jaded "devotion" of porn parody? The closing sequence at a particularly demented and violent drive-in theater screening rocks in a way not seen since Boris Karloff used his senior Citizen Cane to knock out a drive-in sniper in Targets. Yes, Mr. Waters, we know you love to hate us - you have since you made us sit thru a giant drag queen eating dog poo.But, jeez, won't you ever make a movie that doesn't glorify suicidal sociopaths to the point of murder junkie fetishism?

After the bloody awful "Pecker", John Waters made this hilarious satire about a radical independent director, Cecil B. DeMented (Stephen Dorff) and his wild crew (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Adrian Grenier and Alicia Witt, among others) who kidnap a spoiled Hollywood starlet (Melanie Griffith, self-parodying her career of once successful turned B-list name) and force her to star in an underground film. In a world where the spoofs are made for the teenage audience and with the only purpose of recreating blockbusters' popular scenes (the "Scary Movie" series and its lame imitators - even the work of "cult" names like Kevin Smith - "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" - jumped on the same bandwagon), it's refreshing to watch a satire that's really funny and kitsch, but also very witty. DeMented's crew worships directors like Sam Peckinpah, Kenneth Anger, Pedro Almodóvar, Samuel Fuller, David Lynch and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and not everybody will realize the irony in the end, but for film buffs who like these tidbits, "Cecil B. DeMented" is an absolute riot. 9/10.