A suburban housewife's world falls apart when her pornographer husband admits he's serially unfaithful to her, her daughter gets pregnant, and her son is suspected of being the foot-fetishist who's been breaking local women's feet.
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An uptight, middle-aged, repressed woman turns into a sex addict after getting hit on the head, and she then falls into an underground subculture of sex addicts in suburban Baltimore.
Director:
John Waters
Stars:
Tracey Ullman,
Johnny Knoxville,
Selma Blair
Seven segments related to one another only in that they all purport to be based on sections of the book by David Reuben. The segments range from "Do Aphrodisiacs Work?" in which a court ... See full summary »
An aspiring director and the marginally-talented amateur cast of a hokey small-town Missouri musical production go overboard when they learn that someone from Broadway will be in attendance.
Director:
Christopher Guest
Stars:
Christopher Guest,
Fred Willard,
Catherine O'Hara
A gay cabaret owner and his drag queen companion agree to put up a false straight front so that their son can introduce them to his fiancée's right-wing moralistic parents.
Kazakh TV talking head Borat is dispatched to the United States to report on the greatest country in the world. With a documentary crew in tow, Borat becomes more interested in locating and marrying Pamela Anderson.
A day in the lives of a hit-and-run driver and her victim, and the bizarre things that happen to them before and after they collide (sexual assault by a crazed foot-fetishist, visions of ... See full summary »
Francine Fishpaw is an upper middle class suburban housewife in Baltimore. Unfortunately for this "good Christian woman", the money to support her lifestyle comes from her husband's porno theater, the neighbors are protesting, her son is the notorious "Baltimore Stomper", her daughter is knocked up by a local hoodlum, and her husband is having an affair with his secretary. Written by
Stephen J. LeBlanc <sjl@townsend.com>
Todd Tomorrow takes Francine Fishpaw to an "intellectual" theatre that has on the marquee: "3 Marguerite Duras Hits: 'The Truck', 'India Song', and 'Destroy, She Said'." See more »
Goofs
When Dexter's principal calls Francine, Francine starts acting as if he's hung up on her before he's even said goodbye. See more »
During the credits, the title song "Polyester" describes the action seen on screen, leading the audience through a helicopter shot of the suburbs into Francine's house (commenting on its French Provincial decor) and upstairs to meet her. See more »
This was my first John Waters movie, and it opened with scratch and sniff cards. Each "spot" had a color and number and when the appropriate scene arrived we had the privilege of smelling what was on screen. Devine's character had an odor fetish and was constantly spraying air freshener, while a nefarious plot was instigated to drive her insane by planting offensively smelly things like gym sox, dead fish etc for her to find at home.
Her husband runs an adult cinema. Her son, based on the Baltimore Stomper, a true character, sniffs industrial solvents, stalks women with cute shoes and feet, and then stomps on them with his combat boots. The daughter, obviously the model for Christine Applegate's character in Married With Children, is the high school slut that dances on tables for quarters. And Mom worries about fresh scents.
With these subplots to the main plot, it should be obvious that plot resolution and character development are not the main attractions in a John Waters movie. The caricature of society and its stereotypes is his game, and the best moment of the movie has to be when the TV news camera is in the face of one of the Baltimore Stomper's victims as she is being carried to the ambulance on a strecher. The victim's on camera stream of obscene invectives against the callous media was one of the great moments of the movie because it was such a refreshing expression of the common person's real disgust and frustration with tabloid evening news and a culture that trivializes human suffering. Juxtapose a broken instep with the main character's insufferable pain of finding a smelly sock and you have the theme of this movie. Even the fairytale resolutions to the problems are a hilarious sendup of 80's America.
If you want to see what makes John Waters such a cult hero, but would find Female Trouble or Pink Flamingos too offensive, this was his first attempt to bridge the gap to the more accessible films he made later, while still having enough of the gross-out quality for a good laugh riot.
(Serial Mom will be on TV the weekend after Veteran's Day, and it is another very accessible glimpse into the mind of Mr. Waters.)
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This was my first John Waters movie, and it opened with scratch and sniff cards. Each "spot" had a color and number and when the appropriate scene arrived we had the privilege of smelling what was on screen. Devine's character had an odor fetish and was constantly spraying air freshener, while a nefarious plot was instigated to drive her insane by planting offensively smelly things like gym sox, dead fish etc for her to find at home.
Her husband runs an adult cinema. Her son, based on the Baltimore Stomper, a true character, sniffs industrial solvents, stalks women with cute shoes and feet, and then stomps on them with his combat boots. The daughter, obviously the model for Christine Applegate's character in Married With Children, is the high school slut that dances on tables for quarters. And Mom worries about fresh scents.
With these subplots to the main plot, it should be obvious that plot resolution and character development are not the main attractions in a John Waters movie. The caricature of society and its stereotypes is his game, and the best moment of the movie has to be when the TV news camera is in the face of one of the Baltimore Stomper's victims as she is being carried to the ambulance on a strecher. The victim's on camera stream of obscene invectives against the callous media was one of the great moments of the movie because it was such a refreshing expression of the common person's real disgust and frustration with tabloid evening news and a culture that trivializes human suffering. Juxtapose a broken instep with the main character's insufferable pain of finding a smelly sock and you have the theme of this movie. Even the fairytale resolutions to the problems are a hilarious sendup of 80's America.
If you want to see what makes John Waters such a cult hero, but would find Female Trouble or Pink Flamingos too offensive, this was his first attempt to bridge the gap to the more accessible films he made later, while still having enough of the gross-out quality for a good laugh riot.
(Serial Mom will be on TV the weekend after Veteran's Day, and it is another very accessible glimpse into the mind of Mr. Waters.)