Yawn. Poorly Filmed Snooze Fest.

Nice effects though.

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Pecker is another John Waters tribute to the less fashionable side of his native city of Baltimore. Unlike previous films Pecker is set in modern Baltimore of 1998.And it's centered around a young man named Pecker. Lest you think it describes him anatomically or behaviorally, what it really does describe is his way of eating as a child, sort of pecking at his food. Of course it wouldn't be John Waters without the double entendre.Pecker as played by Edward Furlong was given a camera as a kid and it's become an obsession with him, to photograph life and find art in it. Art's everywhere, in his girlfriend's laundromat, in the sandwich shop where he works, in his grandmother's obsession with her talking Virgin Mary icon, even in the garbage where two rats are mating.Soon his pictures attract attention from the art world. But when that happens Pecker's own world starts to crumble around him. How and will he get it back is the story of Pecker.John Waters surrounds Furlong with a nice cast of supporting players with the usual Dickensian names for their characters. Best are Christina Ricci as Pecker's girl friend, Baltimore's laundromat Queen, and Brendan Sexton as his best friend and professional kleptomaniac.Pecker is another of John Waters's lighthearted look at life and some of the strange things we find in it. I think only the most hidebound of rightwing people will not find something amusing in Pecker.

Here's a little background information about the film's director, John Waters. In the late 1960s and 1970s, he was cult film director with a small but devoted following. The earliest of these films were exceptionally perverse but oddly charming (such as the almost impossible to watch PINK FLAMINGOS--which features the eating of feces, among other revolting things). A bit later, his films were a bit less offensive, though they still had a bizarre home-made quality to them. These are the films I love the most, such as FEMALE TROUBLE and POLYESTER, which are still offensive but manage to be a bit more palatable to the average viewer AND still feature the John Waters touches, such as horrible over-acting and a cast of lovable weirdos (such as Divine and Edith Massey--the only woman uglier than the cross-dressing Divine). Then, in the mid-80s onward, Waters actually made quite a few relatively "normal" films that were quite mainstream--culminating in his most mainstream film, HAIRSPRAY.Now, with PECKER, it seems that Waters is trying to combine his earliest style of films with the newer commercially attractive films. The film features material that is at times much more offensive than what you'd recently seen in CRY BABY, SERIAL MOM and HAIRSPRAY--and it would have resulting in this film receiving an X rating had it been made in the 70s or 80s--a close up "beaver shot" like you see repeatedly in PECKER was highly reminiscent of the early style. However, at the same time, the production values are very high and the story amazingly conventional despite the language and crotch shots. As a result, the film left me pretty cold. Plus, this is NOT a film I could let my kids watch--though I did have no problem with my oldest watching POLYESTER.As for the plot, it's obviously intended as a form of autobiography by Waters. While he had become more mainstream by 1998, the film's message is be true to your tacky and garish roots and the evils of being discovered by "the right people". Perhaps the extremes in the film was his attempt to regain this original flavor, though without Divine, Edith Massey AND high production values, the effort comes up very short. I guess Waters never can truly go back!By the way, this film once again featured a small role for Patty Hearst and for her age, she was quite "hot". Way to go Ms. Hearst!

John Waters became a cult-cinema hero in the 70's instantly after delivering the bad-taste milestone "Pink Flamingos" and he continued pleasing his trash-horny fans (including me) with extraordinary and incomparable movies like "Female Trouble", "Desperate Living" and "Polyester". True, Waters' movies were offensive, shocking and often repulsive but they simultaneously were unique outsiders in an overall politically correct American film industry. Nearly twenty years later, there's very few ingeniousness left inside Water's mind and it also looks like he has developed morality and grew a consciousness. He still pretends to be controversial by portraying his beloved Baltimore as an antipathetic wasteland where the people are shameless and eccentric, but he sure ain't provoking anybody. The plot of "Pecker" is very ordinary and basically just a reworking of two of the oldest 'lessons' in storytelling. 1) success and wealth do not equal happiness and 2) home sweet home... even if it is Baltimore! Pecker works in a snack bar but he merely is obsessed by photography and spends his days stalking friends, family and neighbors with a camera as the extension of his eyes. During a local presentation, he's discovered by a fancy New York art dealer and, all of a sudden, every eminent art critic is interested in Pecker's portrayal of the 'culturally challenged' (like described beautifully in the film) models. The dialogs are dull, the script is unoriginal and most gags are so tasteless that they seem to come straight out of a Farrelly-brothers movie (sex in a cubicle?). The acting isn't very good neither and especially Christina Ricci was a bad choice to play the neurotic laundry-shrew. Thank God there also are some positive things to mention! The little Chrissy character, for example, Pecker's hyperactive and sugar-addicted kid sister. Or the "shopping for others" game, which really looks like fun.

John Waters has made the most effusively buoyant, heartfelt, dark, personal little film I think I've ever seen (well maybe Fast Food Fast Women comes in close second) The directors vision is untainted...the narrative is whimsical, the characters are personal and odd reflections of family and his own inner life ...the tone never forced or stylistically over-arch.There is no pretentious shot design, ennui, or magazine grading....Martha Plimpton is amazing as the sister..Eddie furlong is inspired casting. A grandmother with a talking Mary, tea-bagging, recycled clothing, yesterday's garbage becomes today's art -- and the lesson of the film is that the most important thing we can value is family ... and a humble life.