I have the most incredible affection for this film - mostly I guess because watching it I totally get what John Waters was going for, and he nailed it: the use of the old time Universal logo, the late 50s American high school with its inoculations and class distinction, the greaser hero who rides a bike and cries and sings rockabilly, the square girl who wants to be bad, the "coloured music".
The first 30 minutes or so are close to perfection: everyone is cast right, it moves along at a fair clip, is stuffed with music, beatiful Amy Locane's doe-eyed looks of adoration are perfect, the recreation is so right, and it leads to a stirring knock out production of the song 'King Cry Baby'.
Only problem is, after that where can the film go? The couple are together - the try to keep them apart with a false pregnancy allegation and putting him in gaol and have more songs but it seems to run out of puff a bit. Still, it's heaps of fun and there's a chicken run at the end. The support cast is stellar, with Patty Hearst and David Nelson particularly good as Traci Lord's sweet parents.
The DVD is a worthwhile purchase for fans of the film, with a decent making of doco (including Johnny Depp being interviewed – still looking as young as he did in the film [somewhere out there has to be a portrait of him getting old in an attic]; I like it when mega stars appear in docos for their old films like Sean Penn did for Fast Times at Ridgemount High – but then Depp credits this film getting him cast in Edward Scissorhands). Amy Locane also appears – she’s very well preserved too, and comes across as someone not that different from her character, i.e. a bubbly, charming, not very bright (during rehearsals she had to practice kissing with Johnny Depp with her chaperone mother watching).
Heaps of interesting anecdotes: the success of Hairspray saw studios bidding on the film for the first and only time in Waters’ career; the budget was $12 million (compared to Hairspray’s $2.5 million); Traci Lords was constantly being subpoenaed by Federal agents during filming; to make her feel better everyone in the crew confessed to whether they’d been arrested; several numbers and scenes were cut out (good story choices as they came towards the end of the film; they probably would have stayed had the been in the first half); Polly Bergen would play poker with the teamsters during breaks. No anecdotes concerning Troy Donahue, oddly enough.
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