In Waters' Cecil B. DeMented, a megalomaniac punk cult director (Dorff) kidnaps a Hollywood star (Griffith) and uses her to wage a guerrilla campaign against everything that's homogenized and hateful in mainstream movies. That's a promising idea for a satire, and the film has a few viciously funny moments, like the one in which Cecil's followers commit vengeful mayhem at a mall theater. You can feel Waters' rage at what's happened to Hollywood.
Yet what, exactly, are we to make of these artnheaded cineterrorists? They're like a cross between the Symbionese Liberation Army and the staff of Film Comment. The more they flaunt their purist tastes, the more they seem the sort of hermetic snobs the Waters of old would have skewered with a tripod.
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