(In theaters, December 2000) Very uneven satire of the Hollywood movie industry. Though John Waters is revered for his irreverence, Cecil B. Demented seems more like a half-hearted routine satire than a definitive statement on the industry. The best part of the film, aside from some great lines (“Patch Adams doesn’t deserve a director’s cut! It’s long enough as it is!”) is the endearingly kooky troupe of guerrilla filmmakers characters. They promise a much stronger film than what is ultimately presented here, as their innate interest is trampled by a script that simply goes through the motions. The low production values often show and hamper some scenes. The conclusion feels forced and somewhat immature. Film buffs, needless to say, will get much more out of the film than the “average moviegoers” that Cecil B. Demented is lambasting. Worth a rental whenever you’re at the video store and can’t stomach yet another syrupy Hollywood product.
(Second Viewing, On Cable TV, January 2021) I was curious to revisit Cecil B. Demented after twenty years of film education, now that I can reliably recognize the directors whose names are referenced by the band of cinematic rebels at the heart of the film. The plot is simple enough, as movie outlaws kidnap a Hollywood star in order to force her to star in their guerilla-style production. The real point of the film is to allow writer-director John Waters to rail against the worst aspects of circa-2000 Hollywood (which have only been magnified twenty years later), with blatant messages inserted in the mouths of its speaking characters. It’s surprisingly fun, especially at first: This isn’t meant to be a polished or subtle production, and the rough-hewn charm of its explicit message is part of the film’s entertainment. Cecil B. Demented’s first half, in particular, is quite a bit of fun: Stephen Dorff leads an adorable bunch of misfits, each of them identifying as a rebellious director in cinema history. There’s some serious fun in seeing a young Maggie Gyllenhaal as a Satanist, or an equally baby-faced Michael Shannon as a gay driver. The first half of the film is heavy on jokes and comic wackiness, and stands above the second half, as Waters doesn’t seem to have as good a conclusion in mind for his crew. The deaths pile up, the jokes become cheaper, the suspension of disbelief snaps. Perhaps the film does itself a disservice by being insufficiently caricatural—there’s a clash between Waters’s wilder ideas and gritty cinematography of the film that keeps bringing the film back in the real world where it doesn’t belong. The conclusion seems engineered to be unsatisfying, perhaps betraying the corner in which Waters wrote himself in taking potshots—his rebels aren’t created to have a happy ending. Still, I had a bit of fun in watching Cecil B. Demented now that I can better appreciate where it’s coming from—but it’s not anywhere near to fulfilling its potential.
