Wonderful Movie

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

It's a good bad... and worth a popcorn matinée. While it's easy to lament what could have been...

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

Cult director John Waters has always been a favourite amongst those familiar with the 'Midnight Movie' circuit. The Midnight Movies were a bunch of films that included David Lynch's Eraserhead (1977), Alejandro Jodorowsky's El Topo (1970), and Waters' own Pink Flamingos (1972), that were screened in New York in the 1970's to an audience looking for an artistic vision that tended to push the boundaries of taste and subject matter, and led to re-discoveries of films now considered classics such as Freaks (1932) and Night of the Living Dead (1968). Waters, as well as championing the great auteurs such as Pasolini and Fassbinder, was always an outspoken fan of zero-budget schlock like Criminally Insane (1975) and the work of Herschell Gordon Lewis. And this is the focus of Cecil B. Demented, a movie essentially for cinephiles, and one that has the movie business as a whole fixed in its sights.Hollywood starlet Honey Whitlock (Melanie Griffith) is on the verge of another smash hit when she attends the premiere in Baltimore. In front of a shocked audience and many cameras, she is kidnapped by psychopathic film director Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff). Demented takes Honey back to his studio, where his loyal crew, calling themselves the Sprocket Holes, have a vision to take cinema back for the auteurs, and crush the studio system (who are in production of Forrest Gump 2). Honey is to be the star in the first of a new movement - Outlaw Cinema - a process that strips back all production values in favour of achieving ultimate reality. They have also taken a vow of chaste, and will not have sex until the movie is done. Seeing opinion of her drastically slide on television, Honey starts to sympathise with Demented's movement, and eventually she wilfully comes over to the cause.It can be said that true satire cuts both ways, and that is certainly what Waters achieves with this. As an obsessive movie fan myself, there's many a time when I've been eager to tear down the poster of a new Zac Efron movie or punch someone in the face when they've describe how much they love Marley & Me (2008). I sometimes want to scream about how much they're missing through ignorance and that it's their fault so much s**t gets made. But there's times when I've looked back at my own pretentiousness and felt embarrassed at criticising someone who ultimately wants something entirely different out of cinema than I do. Demented's bunch of misfits are nothing more than dysfunctional psychopaths; cartoon cut-outs that are too extreme to not laugh at. Waters seems to be amused more by these scarf-wearing chin-strokers than by those who inadvertently fund the studio system.Although a lot doesn't really work in Cecil B. Demented, I still got a lot out of it. This is mainly due to the fact that I share a lot of Waters' opinions, and can get as much enjoyment out of a tacky old Larry Cohen or Herschell Gordon Lewis horror as I could with something from Godard or Bunuel. Occasionally the bad taste humour doesn't go down so well, such as the sloppy penetration sounds when the gang can finally get down to it, or the rather silly 'Demented Forever' sing-a-long, but Stephen Dorff's wide-eyed, energetic performance managed to be a nice distraction. Demented could be seen as an answer to many of Waters' fans objections to his occasional dabbling with the mainstream, with his colourful efforts Hairspray (1988) and (the very enjoyable) Serial Mom (1994) playing in direct contrast to Pink Flamingos, which infamously contains a scene of dog-s**t eating. But this is a criticism and a homage to the movies, something that all cinephiles can understand.www.the-wrath-of-blog.blogspot.com

At the start of CECIL B. DeMENTED, we see a cluster of close-ups showing teens posing as ushers, doormen and whatever, getting ready to celebrate the premiere of a new film starring Honey Whitlock (MELANIE GRIFFITH), an overage Hollywood diva making a personal appearance to promote her new flick. All of them are treating the premiere as a countdown to some sort of disastrous event because they're all in on the kidnapping plan.Well, the disastrous event does happen--but it's this John Waters film that scores big in that department! Just awful. All the dialog, all the sight gags, all the performances are just short of amateurish, so painfully bad that I forced myself to pay attention until the final out of control ending, by which time director Waters seemed to have lost all control of his project, his cast and his story.Ironically, the theme of this "comedy" is supposed to be "down with mainstream film-making" as the insane Cecil B. DeMented intends to kidnap movie star Griffith so that he can use her as the drawing card on his own underground film where only the first take is ever used because he's a seeker of "the truth" and pure vision. But Water's film, while making fun of mainstream trash (and sometimes rightfully so), is itself an example of less than mediocre craftsmanship, crude, tasteless, and full of puerile humor, the kind that grosses some people out, as well as an unhealthy dose of vulgarity.It's when director DeMented (played by STEPHEN DORFF) takes his film-making crew on the road into the real world that all hell breaks loose. None of the cast has anything more than paper thin characterizations to worry about so they appear to be having a good time as they wreak havoc everywhere. The laughs are scant and the film itself just keeps getting worse as it wobbles on and on toward what is supposed to be an exciting finale.Summing up: Lots of R-rated stuff. Keep the kiddies home for this one.Strictly amateur night material which had me wondering whether MELANIE GRIFFITH was so hard up that she had to take part in such an enormous mess. She fully deserved her "Razzie" Award for Worst Actress of the Year. Too bad someone didn't do her a favor and really kidnap her to prevent her from showing up at the studio!I felt like I was watching an Ed Wood film, except it wasn't in glorious B&W!

the movie itself was pretty excellent. i was laughing almost non-stop through the whole thing. the only thing was - the movie cecil was making was kinda dumb. think about it. when you don't take into account the shenanigans of the cast and crew, the movie they were making just wasn't worth it.the movie itself was great though. i watched it with my sister and we both loved it, but take care of who you watch it with as it is not the kind of movie you want to watch with your grandma.overall i give it a ten because it was one of the few movies i actually went out and bought. it is a favorite.

As Cecil B. Demented begins, the cast of characters begin repeating slogans that express disgust with the MPAA-led studio system and what it stands for. What's ironic is that as the film goes its other eighty minutes, one cannot help but get the feeling the MPAA censored it in order to turn it into an in-cohesive mess. This would make a perfectly satisfactory in-joke, given that many a film has been cut to the point of not making sense by a studio system that, for all of its expenditure, just cannot make a decent film more than once in a blue moon. Indeed, those of us who sat through the monumental disappointment of the recent Lord Of The Rings, Resident Evil, or Alien/Predators films and counted the euphemisms for acts designed to preserve a PG-13 rating, will find much to agree with here.The problem is that when Cecil B. Demented is not delivering the most unsubtle criticisms of a studio system more concerned with playing it safe than making art, the film falls into the trap of stereotyping. All the stereotypes of people the MPAA system wishes didn't exist are accounted for here. The porn star who was abused as a child? Check. The Satanist who cannot blend into the rest of the world? Check. The spotty teen who discovers with a rude shock what he has actually got himself into? Check. About the only stereotype Cecil B. Demented manages to effectively avoid is the black man who uses slang to make his daily speech indecipherable. Perhaps that one ended up on the cutting room floor.Another big problem is a lack of cohesion. The jokes are given plenty of punchline, and the titular character's name is a good riff on how a biblical theme is basically a free pass with the MPAA. The problem is that the jokes spin by so fast, and with so little setup, that oftentimes one doesn't know what to laugh at, leave alone when. About the only consistently funny character is that portrayed by Alicia Witt, who isn't exactly unpleasant to look at, either. Stephen Dorff makes a decent fist of the titular character, but since his motivations are never explored, and his character never given a second dimension, he is literally swimming upstream here. Melanie Griffith's character shows a little development in the form of a one-eighty-degree change of heart in the midst of shooting, but it comes across as so unmotivated that it seems more a matter of convenience than storytelling.The main reason I took a look at this film in the first place was because Zoë and Basil Poledouris feature in the music it contains. Some of the contemporary numbers performed and written by Zoë are quite refreshing to listen to, but like a lot of the rest of the film, the music is buried under the director's confusing intentions. If you watch the end credits and take a look at the listings for the music, you'll barely be able to remember one of the numbers given a name and writer here.About the only moment in the film that truly hits the mark is when the renegade filmmakers manage to crash their truck outside a theater with a marquee that says "No R, X, or NC-17 films shown here ever". The mentality of the passers-by they encounter here is so ugly that it shows quite boldly what sort of monster would sanitise all entertainment until it is only suitable for four-year-olds. Attempts are made to satirise sequilitis. The joke about a sequel to Forrest Gump is obvious, and unfortunately doesn't work. Worse yet, the joke about Hollywood consumer types basically watching this stuff because they are told to watch it does not work either. Partly because Dorff is reduced to shouting it at a theater, but also because last I checked, the studio that financed one of the most subversive films of the past couple of years was a division of Disney (another division thereof also released the Paul Verhoeven classic StarShip Troopers). Go figure.In closing, I gave Cecil B. Demented a three out of ten. With a little more refinement and effort, it could have been a subversive classic along the lines of Bad Santa. Instead, it is little more than a tax write-off. If you have a chance to see it on the cheap, do so, but don't expect anything from it.