director/screenwriter
John Waters
producers
John Fiedler
Mark Tarlov
cinematographer
Robert M. Stevens
music
Basil Poledouris
editors
Janice Hampton
Erica Huggins
cast
Kathleen Turner (Beverly R. Sutphin)
Sam Waterston (Eugene Sutphin)
Ricki Lake (Misty Sutphin)
Matthew Lillard (Chip Sutphin)
Mary Jo Catlett (Rosemary Ackerman)
Justin Whalin (Scotty Barnhill)
Patricia Dunnock (Birdie)
Mink Stole (Dottie Hinkle)
Patricia Hearst (Juror #8)
Suzanne Somers (Herself)
Traci Lords (Carl's Date)
Mary Vivian Pearce (Book Buyer)
Jennifer Finch (Camel Lips)
Suzi Gardner (Camel Lips)
Demetra Plakas (Camel Lips)
Donita Sparks (Camel Lips)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 95m
u.s.
release: 4/13/94
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
other john
waters films
reviewed on this website:
- cecil
b. demented
- a
dirty shame
- female
trouble
- pecker
|
Even
at his most outrageous -- say, the infamous cult classic Pink
Flamingos, which ended with the great Divine eating actual
dog excrement on-camera -- the writer-director John Waters can't
disguise his essential good-heartedness, his affection for his
characters. The more screwed up they are, the more he cherishes
them. Serial Mom, Waters' new comedy, is about a suburban
wife and mother who kills people. Some may think Waters loves
this woman because she's an otherwise nice person. No. He loves
her because she kills people. Always glad to set these things
straight.
After the goofy PG fun of Hairspray and Cry-Baby,
which seemed positively Disneyesque compared with Waters' early
work, Serial Mom finds him firmly back in R-rated territory.
I enjoyed it more than any other movie so far this year, yet
for the first time in his career, Waters' satire isn't quite
cutting-edge. (This is a man who, in Polyester, found
belly laughs in a trip to an abortion clinic.) Waters has always
been preoccupied with killers; he has written often about his
visits to murder trials, and his 1974 Female Trouble was
a sort of dry run for Serial Mom. I think what's happened
is that, with the advent of Court TV and the media popularity
of the Bobbitts and the Menendezes, the national interest in
legal freak shows has dovetailed with Waters' obsession, thus
defanging his humor. Still, Serial Mom has more than enough
bite in other areas.
Kathleen Turner is Beverly Sutphin, a happy housewife who takes
pride in recycling and in making the perfect meat loaf. Her husband
Eugene (Sam Waterston), a dentist, believes strongly in capital
punishment -- until the issue comes closer to home (one of Waters'
subtler, gutsier points). Daughter Misty (Ricki Lake) is boy-crazy;
son Chip (Matthew Lillard) is a horror-movie addict. Waters introduces
the family in a scene that plays as borderline parody (all it
needs is a perky dog named Spot) and neatly establishes that
Bev isn't playing with a full deck: Tracking a fly around the
breakfast table, she swats it bloodily and with a little too
much enthusiasm.
Bev will spend the rest of Serial Mom swatting human flies.
Waters stages the murders so that we laugh at them (Bev's victims
are all grotesque) but feel a twinge of guilt for laughing; after
all, their deaths are far from justified. We watch Serial Mom
go after people who don't recycle, who don't rewind rental videos
before returning them, who cheat her out of a parking space.
Waters wants us to identify with Bev's homicidal rage; he wants
us to admit to our own fleeting murderous impulses (who hasn't
momentarily wanted to kill some asshole who cuts us off on the
highway?) that we hold in check. Bev doesn't hold back. After
her arrest, of course, she becomes a "feminist heroine"
who charms the jury, and Suzanne Somers angles to play her in
the inevitable TV movie.
Serial Mom is consistently witty. Waters' moment of glory
here is the leg-of-lamb murder (perhaps a tribute to the famous
Alfred Hitchcock Presents episode "Lamb to the Slaughter"),
in which blood spatters a TV screen playing Annie; the
point is made but not lingered on. There's a great appearance
by the hard-driving all-female band L7, playing a band called
Camel Lips, at a concert where the crowd respectfully parts for
the now-notorious Serial Mom. (Waters' staging of this scene's
orgasmic fiery murder is ingenious: exciting enough to get you
cheering along with the concert audience, fierce enough to make
you wince.) I'd rather not give away all the jokes, as some critics
(i.e. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone) have done, but there's
a giddy bit of vintage Waters profanity when Bev crank-calls
her snippy neighbor (Waters regular Mink Stole).
Kathleen Turner, who proved her aptitude for gleeful sadism in
The War of the Roses, gives a twinkly, crowd-pleasing
performance. When she's sprinting after her prey with sharp objects,
she's as funny-scary as the Terminator. The purposeful way she
takes off after one victim or another (These jerks aren't gonna
get away from me!) is classic physical comedy. Turner
is funniest, though, at her most wholesome; her All-American-Mom
facade grows more absurd as the movie goes on. Waters' true comic
find here, though, is Sam Waterston, vacationing from a career
of well-appointed television. Waterston scores more laughs with
his eyebrows (they're always curled up in bafflement, like bushy
question marks) than most actors manage with their entire bodies.
I'd love to recommend Serial Mom wholeheartedly. For the
most part, I do. Yet I can't help pointing out that Waters has
essentially made this movie before, and more daringly. (The slogan
of Female Trouble was "Crime is beauty.") His
script here is an excellent expansion of a one-joke idea, and
the one joke is the title. Waters began writing Serial Mom
years ago, so it isn't his fault that it parodies what has become
a self-parody: the American fascination with sordid murder cases,
the cult of criminal celebrity (which in this country goes back
at least to Lizzie Borden). When Bev's family hawks Serial Mom
T-shirts outside the courthouse, we flash on John Wayne Bobbitt
selling his own line of shirts. The concept of a man marketing
his own mutilation is right out of a John Waters film, and unfortunately
it trumps most of the excesses offered in this John Waters
film.
In the past, John Waters shocked us into laughter by skewering
traditional values (and those who would actually watch a Waters
film probably never took those values very seriously in the first
place). Here he skewers himself, too: He's as hooked on true-crime
stories as anyone, and his movie itself is implicated. Waters,
an openly gay filmmaker who has never made much of his sexuality
(it rarely comes up in interviews, and you wouldn't think of
any of his films as "gay-interest movies"), used to
respond to society's rejection of him by violently rejecting
society. He drew more blood when he was irresponsible and nasty,
and we shared his affection for his outcasts -- he was like Andy
Warhol with a raucous, teasing sense of humor and a natural entertainer's
instinct. Serial Mom, however, has a whiff of moral rectitude
about it. Has Waters actually grown up? Now that's shocking.
Waters gets us hooting at Bev's kill sprees, then tweaks us for
being murder groupies. He actually has a young horror-movie fan
exclaim, after finding one of Bev's victims, "That was real
blood, not gore, like in the movies! It was real!" -- at
which exact moment I knew that John Waters has become kinder
and gentler. (The old Waters would've had the kid get off on
seeing real blood.) Serial Mom is often hilarious; Waters
remains our best working comedy director (since Billy Wilder
is retired). But is there anything left for him to puncture?
The film may be a bad-boy satirist's mournful acceptance that
America has finally become sicker than anything he could dream
up. |
