Buy posters from this movie

Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith, looking damn sexy - in the first 15 minutes, anyway) is scheduled to appear at the Baltimore premiere of her latest generic Rom-com, "Some Kind of Happiness." While she's all smiles for the crowds and the camera, she's a real bitch to the help and takes great pleasure in it, especially in tormenting her assistant Libby (Ricky Lake). She thinks it's going to be another boring premiere, but she's in for a surprise.

The staff of the Senator Theater has been infiltrated by a group of radical terrorists/independent filmmakers, led by a "visionary" who calls himself Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorf). Along with a cliched group of misfits which include former porn star Cherish (Alicia Witt), drug-fiend Lyle (Adrian Grenier), and Satanist Goth ditz Raven (Maggie Gyllenhall), Demented and his crew hijack the premiere and kidnap Honey in the name of the "Revolution Against Bad Cinema".

They take Honey back to their "studio" and lair, a derelict movie theater in a ghetto industrial area. Demented informs Honey in short order that a)they are making an independent film that will be the ultimate protest against crappy mainstream studio movies - like the kind she makes, b)They have all taken a vow of celibacy until their film is completed ("We're horny, but we've got a vision"), and c)She is going to star in their film, whether she wants to or not.

Honey goes along under duress at first, and is especially unhappy about the imposed changes in hairstyle, wardrobe, and makeup (to sum up, she goes from looking like a 1950's pin-up goddess to a haggard bag lady). However, the more she goes along with Cecil's demented vision, the more she buys into it, until she finally takes up arms to become one of them ala Patty Hearst (not coincidentally, Patty Hearst plays the whitebread mother of one of Cecil's renegades).

The result is the kind of mishmash you'd expect in a John Waters film. Some of the characters work, some don't (the Satan girl's routine gets really old really fast. Jokes of the "Satan Rules" variety haven't been funny since the 80's, if even then). There are jokes and sight gags aplenty, with some landing solid hits and others missing with a big fat Free Willy splash. There are plenty of running jokes as well, (every time they leave the hideout their van has been repainted with a different color and logo, or every time they are being pursued they end up ducking into a movie theater), and most of the time they work. However, the film frequently slips into bouts of unbridled wackiness that are far too silly to even be respectable lowbrow comedy. The cast is competent, but unremarkable. While being in a John Waters film is certainly a change of pace for Griffith, she seems about as apathetic about the whole thing as the character she's playing. Stephen Dorf's portrayal of Demented, while often amusing, doesn't exude the necessary level of manic obsession one would expect of a cult leader. As for the rest, I think we can blame Waters' script for all the comic misfires more than the actors.

The film's final scenes take place in a drive-in during a Honey Whitlock film festival, and really, what venue could be more appropriate for a John Waters film? The ending is about ludicrous as you'd expect, but also damn funny in places. There's a lot to like in this film, and a lot of laughs. Too bad you have to sit through so much crap to get to them. In short, fans of John Waters will probably love it, while people who hate his films will definitely find this no exception. Those of us who fall in-between will just have to sift what works from what doesn't.

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=3921&reviewer=258
originally posted: 01/22/03 12:36:45
 printer-friendly format