Steve Pulaski If Cecil B. Demented had been in another director's hands, besides the filth elder John Waters', it probably be an underdeveloped, dry exercise. The fact that Waters has surpassed his phase of grotesque shock films and has moved onto smarter, witty satires set in Baltimore shows that he is diverse and willing to jump into any pool even if it's a bit murky.The film is one big kiss to the world of underground cinema, and one big diss on mainstream cinema. I can't say that I disagree with a lot of the film's views. It expresses an extreme hatred for the modern schlock we've been served every week at the movies, and how the independent films will prevail. We're introduced to Honey Whitlock (Griffith), a Hollywood A-lister who is attending her big movie premiere. She is snobby, pretentious, and very condescending to her peers. When Honey enters her premiere, seconds before the movie goes on, independent director Cecil B. Demented (played fantastically by Stephen Dorff) and his band of "kamikaze filmmakers" kidnap her and force her to star in their low budget works of art.The first few minutes, set mostly around the premiere, feature many people involved with Demented's working as attendants and ushers at the event, when really, they are behind a very, very dangerous plot. In John Waters: This Filthy World, a movie that documents his tour across the world, Waters states that if Cecil B. Demented would've been proposed after 9/11 it would've never gotten made. I can see why. The film is a work of "film terrorism" and there are many secretly plotted acts involving violence and the deaths of innocent civilians.Do they work? Most of the time they do. The film is honestly funny, deliciously dark, and a clever commentary on the world of low budget filmmaking. The character of Cecil B. Demented is very funny, and the role of Honey Whitlock is portrayed equally as interesting by Melanie Griffith.Compared to other Water's feature, Cecil might be the weakest one. Pink Flamingos was unexpectedly hilarious in its ugly roots. Serial Mom was overacting at its finest, portraying suburbia like this shiny slice of heaven even when the craziness was unfolding. Cry-Baby captured the fifties era of rebellion perfectly, and I can say that Polyester was a weaker Serial Mom, yet occupying moments of its own. Cecil has the script and the direction of classic Waters, but not the admirable characters of his other pictures. It's a fun exercise, dancing to its own beat, but it isn't on par with his other works of art.Starring: Melanie Griffith, Stephen Dorff, Alicia Witt, Adrian Grenier, Mink Stole, and Ricki Lake. Directed by: John Waters.

Benedict_Cumberbatch After the bloody awful "Pecker", John Waters made this hilarious satire about a radical independent director, Cecil B. DeMented (Stephen Dorff) and his wild crew (Maggie Gyllenhaal, Adrian Grenier and Alicia Witt, among others) who kidnap a spoiled Hollywood starlet (Melanie Griffith, self-parodying her career of once successful turned B-list name) and force her to star in an underground film. In a world where the spoofs are made for the teenage audience and with the only purpose of recreating blockbusters' popular scenes (the "Scary Movie" series and its lame imitators - even the work of "cult" names like Kevin Smith - "Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back" - jumped on the same bandwagon), it's refreshing to watch a satire that's really funny and kitsch, but also very witty. DeMented's crew worships directors like Sam Peckinpah, Kenneth Anger, Pedro Almodóvar, Samuel Fuller, David Lynch and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, and not everybody will realize the irony in the end, but for film buffs who like these tidbits, "Cecil B. DeMented" is an absolute riot. 9/10.

aimless-46 Any film with Alicia Witt and Maggie Gyllenhaal has very good things going for it visually. And although a little weird for mainstream audiences, "Cecil B. DeMented is a very entertaining film. Imagine a spoof about the American film industry and American movie audiences, packaged as a cross between "Dr. Strangelove" and "State and Main".It is after all a John Waters film, and a film set in his hometown of Baltimore. Which means the jokes will be hit-and-miss, with many best appreciated by film industry insiders and Baltimore natives. But the obvious fun the cast has playing their out-there characters is infectious. Melanie Griffith (Tippi Hedren's daughter) has a ball tweaking her diva image as she plays an aging star gradually won over to the cause of her kidnappers (insert Patti Hearst here who actually has a small part in the picture). Alicia Witt gives her best ever performance as the delectable porn star turned revolutionary. The best scene is when she and her fellow film revolutionaries hide out at a porn theater showing "Rear Entry", an anal epic co-starring Witt and a randy gerbil.Stephen Dorff, before he went insane and got involved with Pamela (slug) Anderson, does a good job as the title character. But watch closely for an absolutely glowing performance by Gyllenhaal. She is something special with lines like: "I haven't had this much fun since my last livestock mutilation!" Worth watching if you have a sense of humor, even better if you are demented.

mentalcritic 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.