- Awards
- 21
On the lighter side...
This morning, John Waters' SERIAL MOM (1993) popped up on my YT algorithm. So, not having watched the film in 30 years, I sat through it. I recalled it being kind of tiresome at the time, and I wouldn't say it's "aged well" necessarily, but I was able to get through it without too much of a problem.
For those who don't know, it's about an all-too-proper suburban mother (Kathleen Turner) who's still stuck more-or-less in the '50s, when she begins to taunt and murder her neighbors who displease her in any way. And the media turns her into a celebrity... The problem with the movie is that it's a one-joke concept; Waters can direct and cast pretty well, but it's just not funny enough to maintain its threadbare satirical plot for however long it runs.
It has that semi-glossy, clean look from the '80s and '90s which has middleclass people living in houses in idealized established neighborhoods which were far too expensive (even in the '90s) for real middleclass people to afford anymore (and are now high end). But post-Reagan Hollywood denial was throwing that at us all the time... A clip of Joan Crawford's STRAIT-JACKET pops up (and I kept thinking a scene from Barbara Bel Geddes' leg-of-lamb episode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS should have, too)... Suzanne Somers is a good sport and has a cameo as a narcissistic (ahem!) version of herself who shows up in court in a fur and has been signed to play Turner's character in a cinema biopic. (And when the judge gushes, "I loved you in THREE'S COMPANY" he should have said "SHE'S THE SHERIFF" because it's more obscure and therefore funnier)... And Waters' buddy, Patty Hearst, has a small role as a juror who is beaten and killed in a phonebooth (i.e., a closet, where she was held for 6 months by the SLA). I mean, with friends like these...
Still: meh.
This morning, John Waters' SERIAL MOM (1993) popped up on my YT algorithm. So, not having watched the film in 30 years, I sat through it. I recalled it being kind of tiresome at the time, and I wouldn't say it's "aged well" necessarily, but I was able to get through it without too much of a problem.
For those who don't know, it's about an all-too-proper suburban mother (Kathleen Turner) who's still stuck more-or-less in the '50s, when she begins to taunt and murder her neighbors who displease her in any way. And the media turns her into a celebrity... The problem with the movie is that it's a one-joke concept; Waters can direct and cast pretty well, but it's just not funny enough to maintain its threadbare satirical plot for however long it runs.
It has that semi-glossy, clean look from the '80s and '90s which has middleclass people living in houses in idealized established neighborhoods which were far too expensive (even in the '90s) for real middleclass people to afford anymore (and are now high end). But post-Reagan Hollywood denial was throwing that at us all the time... A clip of Joan Crawford's STRAIT-JACKET pops up (and I kept thinking a scene from Barbara Bel Geddes' leg-of-lamb episode of ALFRED HITCHCOCK PRESENTS should have, too)... Suzanne Somers is a good sport and has a cameo as a narcissistic (ahem!) version of herself who shows up in court in a fur and has been signed to play Turner's character in a cinema biopic. (And when the judge gushes, "I loved you in THREE'S COMPANY" he should have said "SHE'S THE SHERIFF" because it's more obscure and therefore funnier)... And Waters' buddy, Patty Hearst, has a small role as a juror who is beaten and killed in a phonebooth (i.e., a closet, where she was held for 6 months by the SLA). I mean, with friends like these...
Still: meh.
Last edited: