Μύ This Filthy World won't be winning any awards for cinematography - it's just an hour and a half of cult director John Waters speaking on stage - but it's damn funny. Waters' genial depravity, ear for a good line and fine comic timing easily engages for the full length despite the lack of flashy tricks, or indeed, any tricks at all. Filmed over two nights at the Harry De Jur Playhouse in New York, it's somewhere between an evening of reminisces and a stand-up routine.
Looking, as he freely admits, like a child-molester straight out of central casting, Waters rambles entertainingly through his life history and movie-making. It's the frequent digressions into one of his many obsessions - trial-going, Michael Jackson, bizarre porn, the best bad bars in Baltimore - that raise the biggest laughs. Very rude indeed, he has a seedy charisma, and a way with a gross-out tale that'll have most audiences squirming with guilty laughter.
"HILARIOUS TANGENTS"
The film falters a bit during Waters' account of his later, more successful films, occasionally teetering on the edge of luvviedom. The lack of any reminder of what the films and characters he's talking about looked like is felt hard here - one would have to be a fervent Waters-ophile not to get a little lost. But it's never long before Waters goes off on another hilarious tangent about gay sex, or the worst thing a fan has ever had him sign, or constructing a makeshift wig out of scotch tape and his seedy charisma has you spluttering with laughter once more.
John Waters This Filthy World is out in the UK on 28th September 2007.
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