Turner looks deranged and dangerous from the beginning, and by the time her husband discovers her secret cache of tapes from Ted Bundy and pen-pal letters from Richard Speck, the gag's already worn pretty thin.
Waters spoils his own joke by giving the game away too fast. "You're bigger than Freddie and Jason," says her son, admiringly. Īs she goes to trial - choosing to defend herself - Turner becomes an instant celebrity, and even a feminist heroine. Humming Barry Manilow tunes through a grimace, she whacks neighbors who don't recycle, who scoff at seat-belt laws, who wear white heels after Labor Day, who enjoy the musical "Annie" and don't rewind their rented videotapes. Then she blithely heads for the car wash and home to make the perfect meatloaf.Īfter Mom snaps, she turns her penchant for well-meaning murder toward anyone who offends her meticulous standards. Next thing you know, Mom is backing the family station wagon over the teacher in the school parking lot (in a familiar Waters gross-out touch, bloody chewing gum pops out of the victim's mouth). "Well you're doing something wrong," snipes the teacher. "We're a loving and supportive family," she protests, politely. Waters retraces the odd odyssey of this cereal-pourer-turned-serial killer in flashback, as Turner is called in for a parent-teacher conference about gore-obsessed Chip. no one involved in the crimes received any kind of financial compensation." The camera descends from the clouds, into the azalea-choked suburbs of Baltimore and the magazine-perfect kitchen of Beverly Sutphin (Kathleen Turner), who is sunnily serving up cereal to her kids Misty and Chip.Īfter Chip utters an expletive at the table, she reprimands him, "You know how I hate the brown word." The movie begins with a deadpan disclaimer: "This film is a true story.
The outre auteur starts with a one-joke idea - a comedy about a serial killer - that's worth only a chuckle to begin with, then re-visits familiar themes - bloodthirsty pop culture, crime and glamour, the meanness and perversity behind smug, censorious middle-class surfaces - that Waters handled definitively 20 years ago in "Female Trouble." "Serial Mom" is offensively tame and almost (gasp) tasteful.
We've come to expect more from Baltimore's own king of kitsch, the pope of puke. THERE ARE ABOUT 15 minutes of laughs in "Serial Mom." That's a decent score for a comedy by anyone else, but this is a John Waters movie.
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