PECKER is such a great name for the new film by John Waters. It's suggestive of something a tad naughty that we really shouldn't talking about, and ironically enough, that's my reaction to the whole movie.
Pecker is the hero of the flick. He's a buddy photographer who takes pictures of his family, friends, and neighbors in suburban Baltimore. The fruit of his labor is snapped up by a slick New York entrepreneur, and suddenly he's hanging in a gallery.Pecker got his name because he ate like a bird when he was a kid. I believe it, don't you? Sure, it's as believable as everything else about this film. Indeed, Pecker has the clunky look of an Australian soap opera and the acting is just as appalling. Rather than characters, we have overblown caricatures of what once might have been people.
Pecker, for example, posts fliers for his exhibition with one hand while shooting the photos he will display with the other. His girlfriend has a mindless job that she executes with fanaticism. Mum and Dad are wholesome if mindless hardworkers, while Granny is engrossed by her talking statue of the Madonna, the only really funny part of the movie.
Pecker is oppressed by its own desire to preach. Maybe the moral here is that good old home values are better than big city usury? Or maybe John Waters just wants to show off his own home town. But surely not, since neither moral sits at all well in this flick.No, there has to be more. Waters would have us believe that Baltimore is reality. Yet it's no more real in this movie than the stereotype of the New York artworld.
So Pecker's message, at first glance ponderous, is almost effective. Art is not reality. Indeed, audiences are not interested in reality which is so dull it has to be spoofed or edited to become entertainment.