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All-Reviews.com Movie/Video Review
Pecker
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 out of 4
Review by Susan Granger
3½ stars out of 4
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John Waters may be an acquired taste but his "Serial Mom"
(1994) with Kathleen Turner still ranks as one of the funniest films
I've seen. His latest black comedy satirizes a photographer's rise to
fame and fortune, contrasting sleazy, blue-collar Baltimore with the
sleek, sophisticated Manhattan art world. Edward Furlong stars as
Pecker, named for his childhood habit of "pecking" at his food. He's
an unassuming 18 year-old who works in a sandwich shop when he's not
taking pictures of his loving but bizarre family. By chance, his
weird, grainy, often out-of-focus pictures are "discovered" by a New
York dealer, Lili Taylor, who declares him a genius. There's a
hilarious scene at his art opening in Chelsea, where the uninhibited
Baltimoreans - like his obnoxious, candy-chomping six year-old sister
and his grandmother who sells pit beef and totes around a Virgin Mary
statue that says, "Full of grace" - mix with the brittle New Yorkers,
including Patty Hearst as a wealthy art patron who gets drunk in a bar
and dances around with the strippers. Eventually, Pecker discovers the
cost of celebrity and instant over-exposure and must choose between
his old, familiar world and the new horizons opening to him. In the
title role, Furlong is goofy and engaging, while Christina Ricci is
bewildered as his girl-friend who takes her work at the Spin 'n' Grin
Laundromat more seriously than his photographs, perceiving, "You see
art when there's nothing there." And Martha Plimpton scores as his
older sister who works at a gay male strip bar. On the Granger Movie
Gauge of 1 to 10, "Pecker" is a hip, irreverent, hilarious 8. It's
gleeful, outrageous good fun!
Copyright © 1998 Susan Granger
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