Cry-Baby
I though the Hairspray remake was wild, but this is the raw deal, albeit slightly neutered. What the hell is this cast. Iggy Pop taking a bath in a metal can? Patty fucking Hearst is a traffic cop, and her daughter is Tracy “Blade” Lords.
Cry-Baby loves Allison, the Square, which is being courted by another boring Square. She chooses Mr. Baby.
When Allison says “hep”, the grandma chides her for using vulgar jazz words. Why, that “rock and roll” is not even on the hit parade, as they say in All in the Family/Family Guy!
The Squares go to the RSVP club, where a barbershop quartet in tartan cummerbunds sings harmonies.
The Drapes go the swim club, with massive Confederate battle flag, girls in bikinis, hepcats and alligators.
Cry-Baby backstory is insane. His dad was the Alphabet Bomber. Bombed the airport, the barbershop, the car wash, the deli. All in alphabetical order. His wife couldn’t even spell, but she got the chair as well.
Of course, the lady is also an orphan: her parents took separate plane rides but their planes both crashed!
The Squares burn down his bike and do a Barroom Blitz, but when they get to court, only the poors get convicted. Allison gets away scot-free, on account of her grandma.
Cry-Baby goes to juvie, and the prison guard mocks him, saying he will cut his hair, and makes them all pray to Ike, Roy Cohn, Nixon. Cry-Baby is not a crook!
Allison is left alone in her bed, crying and guzzling her own tears. Lenora, “known hussy” is claiming she has his child now.
But Cry-Baby’s gang will spring him from the jailhouse now. When Hatchet Face reaches the prison cinema, they are watching the 3D version of Creature From the Black Lagoon, and she bursts from the screen just as the creature is show, the prisoners get truly spooked.
After Allison’s grandma fucks the judge, Cry-Baby is released, but his rival taunts him about his father, so he challenges him to a game of chicken. This has got to be a send up to Footloose.
So many crazy lines:
Hysterectomy Pants
Clothes clearly designed by homosexuals!
Let Jesus Christ be your gang leader.
The protagonist’s actress was jailed a few years ago for driving drunk and killing some old lady. Johnny Depp also had some issue with The Law. How ironic.
This is my place for ramblings about sequences of images that exploit the human visual limitation know as persistence of vision.