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Cecil B. Demented

Cecil B. Demented

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Rating: 1 stars
Summary: The Worst Movie Ever Made? Perhaps.
Review: There is nothing to like about this movie. The plot is idiotic, the characters are not even one-dimensional, the acting is low caliber, the soundtrack is like torture, and it is not funny. This is not even a movie you love to hate. This is a movie to simply hate. Picture the result if you were to give a group of not particularly bright high school kids a camera with the instructions to shoot a movie by the end of the week. Then make the movie 100 times worse. That is how bad C.B. Demented is. So is this the worst movie ever made? Only time will tell. As of February 16th, 2001, it most certainly is.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Demented Like A Fox
Review: "Cecil B. Demented" is a riot. This is the first DVD I've ever rented that suprised me before the movie even started. Suffice it to say there's a little surprise.

The cast is excellent. Melanie Griffith is perfect as Honey Whitmore, an actress who thinks she's more popular than she really is. She plays an uberbitch with incredible panache. Stephen Dorff plays the title character with enough energy to light up a whole state! Performances like these are what keeps the movie flowing despite it's quirky style.

What struck me the most about this film was Cecil's declaration that "nobody gets to have sex until the film is finished". By doing this, the sexual tension in the movie buildds and builds. I can just hear the ultraconservatives whining now about how depraved this movie is. Why? Because it made them think about sex without giving them any.

I also got a big laugh when Cecil and company lock horns with "Family Film" fans protesting a movie. Honey points out that Family film is just another word for censorship. How true.

Despite being a hilarious movie for B movie film buffs, there are also some great points made without being preachy. That's because Waters manages to teeter between spoof and satire with expert efficiency. Hollywood has been churning out formulaic movies, remakes, and sequels to sequels to sequels for years. That's why Waters film gets four stars.

Highly recommended for fans of John Waters and those who like cult flicks.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: MUST GET
Review: This is an AMAZING movie, i'm a bit of a movie lover, and I cant stop from agreeing with the sprocket holes and cecil in what they do. If you have any respect for film, then this is a film for the ages.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Back to the demented future
Review: John Waters pulls together historical themes from both the news headlines and his own filmography to create a twisted (what else?) and oddly familiar new work. Rather than a continuation of his post-Divine, post-Edith Massey respectability ("Hairspray," "Cry Baby," "Serial Mom," and "Pecker"), he blatantly and deftly steals his own material from earlier edgy classics such as "Pink Flamingoes," "Female Trouble," and "Polyester." Renegade fringe folk committing guerilla art. Crime as beauty. Baltimore's arthouse drive-in's and decaying porno theaters. Violent suburban moms agitating against all that is unwholesome. Straight men cursing the fates who made them heterosexual. Dying for art. Strict celibacy for the sake of the aesthetic. It's all back!

"Cecil B. Demented" updates these themes with a fictional redux of the abduction and conversion of Patty Hearst (catch her cameo!), exquisitely casting Melanie Griffith as a petulant, aging film starlet who bears more than a passing resemblance to Nora Desmond. Waters spoofs his own low budget origins and the more recent Dogma movement. (Dogma is the European independent film crusade that eschews Hollywood movies, opting instead for cheap, fast schedule filmmaking with handheld cameras, no props, location shooting using only available lighting and sound, no special effects, and natural staging with real-life action.)

The film drags a bit during Cecil's professions of faith, and the Ricki Lake scenes are typically pointless, but watch how far Mink stole has come since Mondo Trasho. And Kevin Nealon in "Forrest Gump 2" is not to be missed.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: I Think Waters Has Gotten Better
Review: John Waters has always had his own vision to follow in his independent movies set in his home town of Baltimore, Maryland. "High Camp" is probably the most often used phrase when referring to his body of work. However, the reason I think he's gotten better is now the high camp has been wedded to some really serious ideas. In this film, as well as the one before it, "Pecker," his concern is the independent artist and how that person is virtually in an ongoing war with mainstream American "culture". While this artist is trying to develop quality work, the masses embrace the very worst of shlock, showering it with financial and critical rewards. In "Pecker," the protagonist was an art photographer and in this film he is an outlaw, guerilla filmmaker with a loyal band of followers played wonderfully by Stephen Dorf. They capture Melanie Griffith, an aging star, who is in Baltimore to promote her latest film. At first the star is hostile to working with them but then she starts getting into this newest "role" as cinema terrorist, at war with the tawdry product put out by mainstream Hollywood. This is probably Griffiths best movie since "Body Double," where she played very tongue-in-cheek, Holly, a porno star in the film industry. I laughed out loud during the entire movie. Yes, it was high camp, it did go over the top but what a sendup of the movie industry itself. Give it a shot.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: technique is nothing more than failed style
Review: i am easily one of john waters biggest fans and it pains me to say this, "this is his worst film to date". many will say that i did not understand this film. trust me i did. i got the jokes and references but it simply does not work. the dialogue is forced and laboured. the characters are not memorable at all and their violent and grotesque deaths were welcomed by me simply to keeep from having to watch them any more. there were many attacks on the city of baltimore and none of the cast seemed as if they wanted to be in this film. i can not blame them. all fans of waters will of course want and will see this but plan for the worst and hope for the best. this film is neither technical nor styled. please mr waters release your former films on dvd. hollywood success has seemed to have squashed your uniqueness.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: THE WILD AND FUNNY NEW JOHN WATERS FILM
Review: Renegade director Cecil B. Demented (Stephen Dorff), kidnaps Hollywood diva (played to perfection by Melanie Griffith) and forces her to star in his latest masterpiece, along side a cast of lunatic's...a porn star, a junkie, a homosexual limo driver, a not-sure-about his sexuality hairdresser, and a few more loonies...hey this IS a John Waters movie.

Battling Hollywood moguls, the police, and the media, Cecil will stop at nothing to finish his "underground" movie, and save cinema from the curse of HOLLYWOOD!

"Cecil B. Demented" is John Waters the way we like him...totally crazy! Although, NOT a movie for everyone, those looking for something out of the ordinary will be pleased with this send-up of renegade movie making. A great cast including: Dorff, Griffith, Alicia Witt, Adrian Grenier, and Waters' regulars Ricki Lake, Patricia Hearst, and Mick Stole, add to the fun.

Nick Gonnella

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Instead of wasting your money on another Kevin Costner movie
Review: We all know John Waters, and if you don't maybe you should ask yourself why this selection should interest you in the first place. He has created B rate films that were sure to shock the audience, and force them into convulsions. That was the late seventies, and yes everyone must "grow up" (and I use this term loosely.) This movie, unlike most of his work does have a political issue to accompany the unique behaviors displayed by the unique characters. It is a message of insulting the conformist society that pays to see movies like "Runaway Bride," at the theatre. His characters are, as always, well developed and completely motivated in the genre created by Waters. If you believe that society should revolt against the spoonfed cinema forced down the public's throat, like we are mentally challenged infants, this film is definitely for you. It is a movie that is non-passive in its message that it is better to have a strong and passionate viewpoint than no viewpoint at all. DEMENTED FOREVER!

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Slight John Water
Review: The gang's all here. Stephen Dorff, Melanie Griffith, Ricky Lake, Mink Stole, and an always game Patricia Hearst, are all on hand in John Water's slight, if good natured, comedy in which a group of outlaw filmmaking terrorists kidnap a spoiled Hollywood actress and force her to perform in their own production. Along the way, Waters takes a few swipes at the Hollywood establishment - bemoaning efforts such as "Patch Adams" and it's kind - and while there's not much sting to the indictment (or much surprise), the film still gives off a cheerful buzz.

Though Waters no longer seems to be pushing his comedies to the limits of bad taste, as he most assuredly did in cult classics such as "Pink Flamingos," he's at least remained true to his own vision. With their own distinctive look and sound, there's no mistaking a Waters film for any other, and while the world may not want a "kinder, gentler" Waters, surely it's better then none at all.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: One of Water's best and most personal films
Review: People who do not get a lot about this film are probablly not insane film buffs. A lot of the films jokes are cinema related. I'm not gonna go on tirade trying to prove how incredible I think this film is but the ending is really wonderful and a kind of homage to "Sunset Boulevard." This film got me out of a personal jam that I was in. It made me see you should go all out for your art. This film rules and John Waters is a genius.


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