A Dirty Shame

Just do it: A Dirty Shame celebrates sleaze in true Waters fashion

In the blue-collar Baltimore suburb of Harford Row, something lewd is afoot. Hairy homosexuals are frolicking on their front lawn, respectable marrieds are doing it on the breakfast table and ancient crones are molesting the paper boy. Even the bushes are writhing in leafy ecstasy.

Welcome to A Dirty Shame, John Waters' latest assault on middlebrow taste and right-wing repression. Tracey Ullman is Sylvia Stickles, a depressed, dessicated housewife bored with her husband (of course she is, he's Chris Isaak) and embarrassed by her massively overdeveloped daughter (Selma Blair), currently under house arrest for flashing her gargantuan hooters at anyone who asks to see them. Then Sylvia suffers a blow to the head during a minor traffic accident, and emerges a raving sex fiend on an obsessive hunt for random cunnilingus.

In thrall to her "runaway vagina," Sylvia is gratefully inducted into a cult of sex addicts led by the charismatic Ray-Ray (Johnny Knoxville, all cartoon tongue and priapic Elvis quiff). The sight gags come fast and furious as Waters gleefully assigns fetishes, from the vanilla (an adult baby) to the neapolitan (a couple who throw up during foreplay). By the time we see Sylvia going down--literally--on an unwary water bottle and Ray-Ray locking lips with a CGI squirrel, you'll either be weak with laughter or a card-carrying Republican.

Plumbing depths of outrageousness that his post-Divine oeuvre has so far avoided, Waters is nevertheless preaching not nymphomania but acceptance. The Harford Row "neuters" and their decency rallies are mere stand-ins for the right-wing pleasure police, and Waters--ever the little boy thrilled with dirty words and naughty bits--delights in giving them a guided tour of the more esoteric shores of sexual pleasure. "Believe!" commands a sign in the Pinewood Park and Pay parking lot. We do, John, we do.--Jeannette Catsoulis