Jeanskynebu the audience applauded

UnowPriceless hyped garbage

CrawlerChunky In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Siflutter It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

Steve Pulaski After making grotesque pictures with heavy commentary subtly thrown in, writer/director John Waters ventures out of his comfort zone and jumps into the mainstream world. Pecker is a landmark for Waters since this is his first effort that was very mainstream in 1998, but for audiences and fans of his older work, it will most likely be a mediocre excursion. At least it's over pretty quickly.Nothing in Pecker is very funny. It lacks the satire and wit of Waters' previous pictures that weren't in his comfort zone. In his more modern films like, Cry-Baby and Serial Mom, I was able to retract a moral, a message, or even a clever parody element currently absent from Hollywood films. I wasn't able to pick up too much from Pecker, although it might be trying to play off of the rags to riches formula. If it is, it's too subtle to even notice.The story revolves around a teen nicknamed Pecker (Furlong). Apparently, he pecks at his food a lot and, viola, a strangely placed, perhaps innuendo-driven name was born. Nevermind. Pecker is an amateur photographer, which is already annoying. He is constantly snapping pictures. Click, click, click. Snap, snap, snap. And he never stops. It's almost maddening to see how many times he does it. Granted, real photographers don't care if you're in the middle of a conversation, if something appears to be interesting they'll interrupt you with a snap of a camera. It is realistic, but it's incredibly overdone.Pecker takes pictures of all kinds of things. From random facial expressions to private parts and sex acts. He captures them all. His long suffering girlfriend (Ricci) is oblivious to art, and she pretty much captures the personality of the rest of us as we wait for Pecker to break new ground or for Waters to win us over with some great comedic relief. But it's like waiting for Christmas in the dead of July. It's not going to come anytime soon, and it's foolish to expect such an occurrence.Pecker's work becomes recognized by a famous art dealer. His dysfunctional family is the ones that are the true victim to his acts. They are the ones exploited, and Pecker just sits back, wondering if he did anything to start this. One character that I found cute, but very underwritten (much like Christina Ricci's character) was the borderline kleptomaniac best friend of Pecker played by Brendan Sexton III, a terrific and underrated talent in the world of film. The problem is he never gets his time to shine either. Instead he's replaced by such desperate antics like Pecker's grandmother's talking Mary statue that is nothing but a frozen plot device that is practically useless. Not to mention, the film's love affair with constant flat jokes.Waters' regulars like Mary Vivian Pearce and Mink Stole are here, but not in mass amounts. Perhaps including Mink Stole as the grandmother would've provided a great deal of laughs. Laugh at you must but it would (1) make Pecker more tolerable than it already is, and (2) be the perfect, out of place role for her since she did such a wonderful job in Female Trouble as a fourteen year old girl who didn't look any younger than thirty.I've always said that anyone can throw on a cheesy costume and make a parody, many can make an homage to their favorite film, but only few could pull of a very good satire. John Waters can pull of a great satire and possibly do all of those other things very well. So why did he choose to focus on a film with no wit, direction, fun, laughs, or purpose? Pecker isn't long at eighty-six minutes, but becomes a monotonous excursion through recycled screenplay odds and ends before eventually arriving at a questionably worthy conclusion. What the *click* was that all about? Starring: Edward Furlong, Christina Ricci, and Brendan Sexton III. Directed by: John Waters.

MartinHafer Here's a little background information about the film's director, John Waters. In the late 1960s and 1970s, he was cult film director with a small but devoted following. The earliest of these films were exceptionally perverse but oddly charming (such as the almost impossible to watch PINK FLAMINGOS--which features the eating of feces, among other revolting things). A bit later, his films were a bit less offensive, though they still had a bizarre home-made quality to them. These are the films I love the most, such as FEMALE TROUBLE and POLYESTER, which are still offensive but manage to be a bit more palatable to the average viewer AND still feature the John Waters touches, such as horrible over-acting and a cast of lovable weirdos (such as Divine and Edith Massey--the only woman uglier than the cross-dressing Divine). Then, in the mid-80s onward, Waters actually made quite a few relatively "normal" films that were quite mainstream--culminating in his most mainstream film, HAIRSPRAY.Now, with PECKER, it seems that Waters is trying to combine his earliest style of films with the newer commercially attractive films. The film features material that is at times much more offensive than what you'd recently seen in CRY BABY, SERIAL MOM and HAIRSPRAY--and it would have resulting in this film receiving an X rating had it been made in the 70s or 80s--a close up "beaver shot" like you see repeatedly in PECKER was highly reminiscent of the early style. However, at the same time, the production values are very high and the story amazingly conventional despite the language and crotch shots. As a result, the film left me pretty cold. Plus, this is NOT a film I could let my kids watch--though I did have no problem with my oldest watching POLYESTER.As for the plot, it's obviously intended as a form of autobiography by Waters. While he had become more mainstream by 1998, the film's message is be true to your tacky and garish roots and the evils of being discovered by "the right people". Perhaps the extremes in the film was his attempt to regain this original flavor, though without Divine, Edith Massey AND high production values, the effort comes up very short. I guess Waters never can truly go back!By the way, this film once again featured a small role for Patty Hearst and for her age, she was quite "hot". Way to go Ms. Hearst!

tom-2390 John Waters movies are like John Travolta movies. There is a wide range of good and bad within both of their bodies of work. That said, this is my all-time favorite John Waters movie because he tackles the story of an artist making his art on his own terms in a sweet and funny way. If you liked "Hairspray", "Cry Baby" and "Lust in The Dust", you will definitely like this film. The dysfunctional characters are wonderful and I think this flick says a lot about where we must draw our inspiration as artists. "Pecker" fits in really nicely with other dysfunctional family classics like "Orange County" and "Little Miss Sunshine". The soundtrack is perfect, and the movie has a great pace from start to finish. If you are an artist or dream of being an artist, you absolutely must see this film!

The_Void 'Pecker' is one of those films that you watch when you've got nothing better to do. However, unlike many of those films, Pecker is one that almost makes you glad that you had nothing better to do as if you had, you wouldn't have seen it. Don't get me wrong, I'd rather have been at lottery HQ collecting my winnings, on the phone to a representative from my local pub telling me that I've won free beer for life or even simply enjoying a night in with several top supermodels; but on the whole, I rate the eighty five minutes I spent watching this as time well spent. The film is called 'Pecker' because that's the name of it's central character, but something tells me that Mr John Waters named the film so for other, more innuendo related, reasons. Anyway, Pecker is a rather odd young man who lives in a rather odd small town somewhere in America. Pecker's hobby is to take photos of anything and everything, and claim that it's art. This hobby, one day, attracts the attention of a New York art dealer and Pecker is transported into super-stardom, much to the dismay of his Laundromat obsessed girlfriend and the rest of his small town.Director John Waters directs the film in a very surreal style, which gives it a very unique edge, and instantly grabs your attention. Waters evidently doesn't care about the integrity of film-making, and so sees fit to meld together something that can easily be seen as a mess. The leads carry Waters' mess with vigour and gusto, but never really impress or deliver great performances. Edward Furlong gives his character a naive edge, which bodes well with his small town roots. He does look more than a little bit embarrassed at times, but sort of adds to the kitsch appeal of the movie. Christina Ricci does her usual 'bitch' thing, but it doesn't work in this film as her character is supposed to be a more down to earth and snob hating, so to have her as a snob herself ensures that the film loses yet more credibility and makes it even more of a mess. The film will offend some viewers for it's rather graphic lesbian strip club scene; not to mention it's central, gay club, location, and that adds weight to the idea that this is very much a 'love it or hate it' sort of film, and I'm sure that's how Waters wants it. I, however, do not add weight to that claim as I merely thought it was 'pretty good'. Take that John!