Cecil B Demented film review

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CECIL B. DEMENTED

Director John Waters has created a brand name in kitsch moviemaking. The schlocking Pink Flamingos and Polyester became benchmarks against which taste and convention should never be measured. He has reveled in ridiculing Hollywood at every opportunity and with Cecil B. DeMented it becomes the central theme.

Melanie Griffith plays a bitchy, conceited, once glittering star, Honey Whitlock, whose lustre is beginning to fade. She finds herself in Baltimore (Waters' beloved hometown) to attend the premiere of her latest film when she is kidnapped by Cecil B. DeMented (Stephen Dorff), a guerilla film-maker and his motley collection of accomplices known as the Sprocket Holes, each one adorned with a tattoo bearing the name of one of Waters' favourite directors, including Samuel Fuller and Otto Preminger. Chosen because she embodies everything they hate about Hollywood, they plan to get Honey to star in their shoestring budget film Raving Beauty.

Initially reluctant to go along with their plan, Honey is slowly won over by DeMented's passionate condemnation of Hollywood. When a critical review of her movie appears in Time, alluding to her flagging appeal, she agrees to go along with their plan. Her once glamorous image is transformed into a vamp punk and they go about their journey of cinematic terrorism.

It's all too easy to parody Hollywood and indeed there are moments in Cecil B. Demented which are funny. The billboard outside one cinema boasts 'Les Enfants Du Paradis - the first time in English'. But all too often the subjects are easy targets. When Honey, Cecil and the Sprockets descend on a cinema showing Patch Adams - The Director's Cut and start railing at the poor unsuspecting ticketbooth operator, you can’t help feeling Waters is making jokes when he could be making a point. Also, over the years Waters has established a small but loyal legion of fans, a factor that has enabled him to survive but never threatened him with mass appeal, thus ensuring that Cecil B. DeMented will only ever preach to the converted.