Dialing down the danger factor of his early films, campy curator John Waters was coming off two mainstream hits (HAIRSPRAY/’88; CRY-BABY/‘90), when he went for the triple, but got thrown out at the box-office plate. Not that this suburban satire doesn’t get its laughs (a gory comic gloss on CRAIG’S WIFE*, the stage classic about an obsessively meticulous homemaker who drives everyone away with her mania for neat perfection; ORDINARY PEOPLE/’80 one of its many offspring), but here Waters’ targets are too easy; as social satire, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. With ultra-bright colors and broader than broad playing, Kathleen Turner uses a killer smile (literally) to play the Happy Homemaker to her exemplary nuclear family: loving husband, two great kids, colonial home, glazed meatloaf. But guests must abide by her rules of etiquette or else. (Hard to believe Waters missed having a pet to die early and set things in motion.) And everyone seems to be winking at the camera to let us know they’re only fooling. A touch of Waters’ audacity surfaces here and there: a grieving brother pivots from revenge to profit participation, a murdered teen lover loses his liver when skewered. But even a super cynical ending all too tame.
DOUBLE-BILL/LINK: *George Kelly’s Pulitzer Prize winning 1925 play was filmed thrice: a silent in 1928 for Irene Rich; as CRAIG’S WIFE/’36 (with Roz Russell); as HARRIET CRAIG/’50 (with Joan Crawford). https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2024/12/craigs-wife-1936.html https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2017/06/harriet-craig-1950.html
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