BEFORE: I kind of need a break from documentaries, this is a bit like how I felt last year after watching SO many rock music docs, most of which followed nearly the same career arc - get famous, get rich, get burned out, get dead - and while my topics have been more varied this year, it's a lot of downer material that stretches across war, politics, climate change, pedophilia and economic scandal. That all ends up taking its toll, and landing on the moon and Fred Rogers entertaining children just isn't enough to counter-balance it.
So, I'm going to drop in this comedy, which has eluded all efforts so far to link to it. Of course, now I could link it to other films like "The Virgin Suicides", or "The Perfect Score", but I'm choosing to drop it in here, it makes my numbers work out better for the year, and it's been on my list for a very long time. Plus, my BFF just met John Waters a few weeks ago in Boston, and there's enough impetus for me to follow through with this film.
Sam Waterston appeared in yesterday's documentary about Jane Fonda, and there's some more motivation - I'd planned to use the Joan Rivers link, but another connection just gives me the option to flip two films around, if I feel like it. Maybe I'll regret this next year when I can't find a link between two films, but I'll have to just take that chance.
THE PLOT: A sweet mother finds herself participating in homicidal activities when she sees the occasion calls for it.
AFTER: OK, so maybe using a film about a murdering suburban mother wasn't the BEST way to take a break from all the death and scandal seen in documentaries, but it was a way to mix things up, at least.
This is a strange film, no matter how you slice it - sometimes it's all about tone, and this one just has a weird tone. Well, of course, every John Waters film has a weird tone, because it comes from a weird place, because he's a bit of a weird guy. I don't mean that as a dig, it's just a fact, he's a weird guy who seems to enjoy being a weird guy. But as a result, or maybe a by-product, his weird films have weird characters in them, and again, I (sort of) mean that as a compliment.
But I couldn't help but notice that there were so many actions taken in this film that seemed out of place, or rather they were IN place because they were in a John Waters movie, but they'd be out of place anywhere else. And there's so many weird things being done by weird people that it almost seems like the people who AREN'T acting weird don't belong, like the normal people (if there are any) are the weird ones. Does that make sense? This trait is highlighted to the point where some characters are so blown up, so grandiose that they're basically cartoon characters, in that their actions have no basis in reality.
I'll give you an example, the daughter character - with everything that we know about her, like she's got bad luck with men, she's overweight so she's got body issues, and then her mother ends up killing the guy who dumped her, or wouldn't date her (it's a bit unclear). Wow, there's a lot to unpack there. But then during her mother's trial, after making a connection with a reporter who's also written a book about her mother, she's making out with that reporter DURING THE TRIAL. I can't, in a million billion years, imagine a situation where my mother is on trial for murder, I'm present in the courtroom and I'm making out with someone. That's like some weird dream I'm going to have now, thanks, John Waters. But somehow it fits with this character, because she's been built up to this weird situation, or maybe it's just that her character needed something to do, instead of just sitting there.
This is just one character, of course, but they're ALL like this in some way. The teen son likes gory horror movies, his friend likes nudie magazines, and there's a guy who writes things on bathroom stalls, but in a way that makes me question whether the director understands why men write things on bathroom stalls. The character is just some kind of perv and that's his "thing", but I don't see how that's something that turns anyone on, right? It's just usually a random act of vandalism, or a way to convey information about the looseness of women in that area. You know, like "for a good time, call Jenny at 867...well, you know the number.
The weirdest character of all, of course, is the title character, the serial-killing mom, so let's get to her. I don't pretend to understand real serial killers like Charles Manson and Ted Bundy, among others, and maybe nobody can - but we can try to understand sociopaths, people who have no regard for other people. The prevailing thought is that a sociopath could easily become a serial killer, because other people simply don't MATTER to him (or her) - it's a short leap from "nobody else matters" to "it doesn't matter if I kill them". But does anyone really know this for sure, or is it impossible to truly understand the insane? You always hear people talk about the killer who lived next door, saying he was "a quiet guy, kept to himself, didn't cause any trouble..." Well, it's no wonder that nobody spotted him, because that also sounds like the description of a few million people who AREN'T serial killers. How do tell someone who's bottling up their rage and anger, and hiding it from the world, apart from the people who don't have any rage or anger at all? And you never hear the neighbor who says, "Yeah, that guy was wound way too tight, he really had a screw loose. We always figured he'd kill somebody one of these days, so we just tried to stay out of his way..."
My point is, everybody's got triggers, even normal people. Everyone gets annoyed or frustrated by different things, though most people don't end up killing people to vent their frustration. Maybe for you it's people in the grocery store who use the express line, even though they've got too many items, or people who cut in front of you in line at the coffee shop, or people who bring their screaming kids with them to a restaurant and you're in the next booth trying to enjoy a quiet meal. And don't even get me started with people on the subway, or traveling with you on the same plane. For me it's the people across the street who shovel their snow in the winter from their sidewalks right into the street, and they do this early in the morning, before the plow comes by, so the plow pushes it over to MY side of the street, and my wife's car is snowed in until April. I've lost my temper to the point where I dash across the street and shovel snow from the street BACK into their driveways, and then they think I've lost my mind. But it's what I feel I have to do to make my point.
When we meet this character (generically called only "Mom" in the cast list) one of the first things we learn about her is that she's been making vulgar prank calls to a friend, and this is where we start to see how deep her insanity runs. But a later flashback reveals that at some time in the past, this woman took the best parking spot in the supermarket lot, one that she was patiently waiting for. So there you go, there's a trigger. But as the movie progresses, her triggers get more and more ridiculous - she wants to kill her son's friend for not wearing his seat-belt (well, it is against the law), she wants to kill her neighbor for not recycling her trash, and she wants to kill a woman who returned a VHS tape to the video-store without rewinding it. Eventually you start to realize that with this many triggers, Mom is either certifiably insane, or she's looking for excuses, and just enjoys killing. Again, more research is needed to determine if this is really the way serial killers work, or if they're bound by the rules of their manifestos, or if it's all just random in the end.
But maybe I'm over-thinking it. Probably, I'm over-thinking it. Waters just probably wanted to make a light comedy about serial killing, and explore the dichotomy between a suburban Mom who appears to be all sweetness and light, but is full of pent-up rage on the inside. Maybe it's hard being the "perfect" mom with the "perfect" life, and maintaining that illusion for so long broke something inside. Or maybe when she swatted that fly in the first scene, that was a gateway action. I know I often find myself swatting at a fly or a mosquito, but I have difficulty killing anything alive that's bigger than that. We had a huge spider living on our front porch a year or two ago, and I couldn't bring myself to kill it, even though my wife asked me to - she'd just started smoking out on the porch instead of inside the house, and she hates spiders and bugs. We ended up knocking the spider off our porch light (where it had learned how to turn the light on and off, no kidding) and catching it in a jar, then I walked it three blocks away to a cemetery, where I let it go to make some nice giant decorations for Halloween. Because if there's even a CHANCE that spiders can somehow communicate with each other and spread the word about me killing one of their brethren, I just don't need any repercussions from that in my life. Or let's just say I didn't want any bad karma coming back to me.
But how do we get from killing a fly to killing another human - that's a huge leap, right? Does reading about serial killers somehow turn you into one? Being fascinated with killing via horror movies or violent video-games? I'm not prepared to say there's a direct link, because I disagree with most forms of censorship, but I'm also not willing to posit that there's no connection at all. In many ways watching a horror movie could be seen as a non-violent way to scratch that same itch - if you watch the movie or play that video-game you could be LESS likely to kill someone in the real world, then. In much the same way that watching a porno movie can make you less likely to have sex in the real world, if you know what I mean.
But perhaps there's no larger message here about killing, it's just designed as a fun romp through suburban America, with a high body count. Or maybe it's about the cult of fascination that's developed around killers, though in a sense we've maybe come a little TOO far in this regard. Charles Manson and his followers killed what, five people? Ted Bundy killed a dozen, maybe? And they're cult figures. But a teen shoots up a school and kills 50 kids, or a sniper takes down 100 people at an outdoor concert, and they're absolute monsters, and we try to forget their names and not give them the notoriety that they might have been looking for. Maybe we look at them because we see a bit of ourselves, a part that we don't want to acknowledge, and maybe we look at this movie and see what we want to see. If we killed someone, or had someone close to us murdered, would we wonder who would play us in the TV movie about the crime?
Another thing that didn't really work, so NITPICK POINT (#2 out of, I don't know, 20?) would be the "Basic Instinct" parody in the courtroom, where that guy who writes on bathroom stalls is on the stand, and "Mom" tries to distract him by opening her legs and lifting up her skirt to turn him on. It's a weird bit for several reasons, but my problem is the fact that the table she's sitting at is open on all sides, so everyone in the courtroom, including the jury, would be able to see what she's doing very clearly. And wouldn't somebody object to this taking place? Leading the witness, at the very least?
For this, and many other reasons, I'm forced to conclude that I'm not supposed to take any bit of this film seriously. Which, of course, is fairly standard for a John Waters movie. But if nothing is serious here, than what are we doing? It's just some kind of bizarre social commentary, but I'd still like to try to figure out what the point of this little exercise was.
My other thought is that we live in a changing world. "Mom" eventually gets triggered by the fact that one of the jurors is wearing white shoes, and it's "after Labor Day". Which I never really understood, like isn't it always "after" one Labor Day or another? Why can't you just say, "don't wear white in the fall or winter"? Or "not in October, November and December"? Plus, as that juror pointed out, the rules of fashion are different now, nobody cares if you wear white in the fall any more. Times change, opinions change. It used to be "OK" for one person to own a bunch of other people, and profit from their labor. But then times changed - slowly, but they changed. It used to be that two men or two women couldn't express love for each other out in public, or hold hands when walking down the street. Times change, opinions change. It used to be scandalous for a President to have sex with a woman who wasn't his wife - impeachable, even - and now I guess the bar has been set so low that we don't even care about our leaders having affairs any more, it barely registers any more.
But we've got a whole new list of offenses that justify homicide, it seems. When I was young, McDonald's was still serving burgers in styrofoam containers, even though we all knew that was bad for the environment, somehow. They eventually caved and wrapped everything in paper, but they're still using (gasp!) plastic straws! It's like they don't care about sea turtles at all! Honestly, the whole ocean's filling up with plastic and other garbage, that should be the lead story, but everyone seems to be focusing on the MONSTERS who can't use some other kind of straw, because one dumb sea turtle inhaled one. Which makes me wonder how real that viral video was, and also whether the people who manufacture plastic straws closed their companies the day that video appeared on the scene, or if they tried to stay in business for another week.
Meanwhile, many of the same people who can't bear to think of a sea turtle with a straw up its nose are still eating burgers and chicken sandwiches, because who cares about cows and chickens? It's a weird place to draw the line, that's all I'm saying. I eat meat all the time, of course, but I still try to feel guilty about it - somehow when you're not the one doing the killing it's much easier to justify, but I realize I'm still part of the society that mass-produces meat, so almost all of us have blood on our hands, but we choose to not think about it most of the time. Anyway, the methane produced by cows is supposedly one of the big causes of climate change, so it's very confusing - should be we eating less beef, so there will be less cows killed, or should we be eating MORE cows so there will be fewer of them farting and making more methane?
I don't know the answer to so many questions - like why did everyone in the church panic just because "Mom" sneezed? That was weird. Why didn't anyone at the concert try to help the teen who was on fire? Also weird. There are a lot of things here that just didn't add up, or feel like they were supposed to connect with the plot somehow, only somebody couldn't figure out how to tie it all together. Then what you get is really just a bunch of random, interconnected events, almost.
Also starring Kathleen Turner (last seen in "Dumb & Dumber To"), Matthew Lillard (last seen in "Trouble With the Curve"), Ricki Lake (last seen in "Cecil B. Demented"), Scott Wesley Morgan (ditto), Mink Stole (ditto), Tim Caggiano (ditto), Doug Roberts (ditto), Patsy Grady Abrams (ditto), Walt MacPherson (last seen in "Thirteen Conversations About One Thing"), Justin Whalin (last seen in "The Dead Pool"), Patricia Dunnock (last seen in "Money Monster"), Lonnie Horsey, Mary Jo Catlett (last seen in "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas"), Suzanne Somers (last seen in "Magnum Force"), Kathy Fannon, John Badila, Traci Lords, Jeff Mandon, Colgate Salsbury, Beau James, Kim Swann, John Calvin Doyle, with cameos from Joan Rivers (last seen in "Robin Williams: Come Inside My Mind"), Patricia Hearst (last seen in "Joan Didion: The Center Will Not Hold"), Bess Armstrong (last seen in "The Four Seasons"), the band L7 and the voice of John Waters (last seen in "Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Road Chip").
RATING: 4 out of 10 starlings at the bird feeder
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