SERIAL MOM
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1994 Scott Renshaw
Starring: Kathleen Turner, Sam Waterston, Ricki Lake, Matthew Lillard, Mary Jo Catlett. Screenplay/Director: John Waters.
Let's compare the cinematic Bards of Baltimore for a moment. In one corner, we have Barry Levinson, who painted the city in nostalgic sienna tones with DINER, TIN MEN and AVALON. In the other is John Waters, with POLYESTER, HAIRSPRAY and now SERIAL MOM. If I'm guessing, I'd say that the Chamber of Commerce might lean towards Levinson. However, when putting their latest films head to head, I think my choice is obvious. Levinson's JIMMY HOLLYWOOD was a slapdash attempt at social commentary; SERIAL MOM is a sly bullseye, hitting every target in sight with a return to the gloriously grotesque John Waters of PINK FLAMINGOS fame/infamy.
Kathleen Turner stars as Beverly Sutphin, a suburban housewife with everything: loving husband Eugene (Sam Waterston); feisty son Chip (Matthew Lillard); sweet daughter Misty (Ricki Lake). She also has a little secret: she kills people. A lot of people. Anyone who crosses her, really, from the teacher who insults her son to the boy who jilts her daughter. With the growing body count, Beverly increasingly becomes the object of suspicion, especially when Eugene finds correspondence between Beverly and Ted Bundy. Eventually, Beverly is brought to trial, a trial which becomes a huge media event and a potential TV movie starring Suzanne Somers (herself).
Waters manages to comment on so many different aspects of contemporary society that it's hard to believe he intended them all. At the top of his hit list is our fascination with tabloid sensationalism, and the cult of personality which develops around anti-social behavior. Beverly reads _Helter Skelter_ and collects clippings of mass murder stories; Chip is delighted by the fame Mom's trial brings. Even the neighborhood busybodies who are quickest to condemn Beverly get together to watch talk shows about girlfriends of serial killers. Without hand-wringing, Waters points out our complicity in such crimes through our fascination with them. But he doesn't stop there. Also under his scrutiny are the latent vigilantism borne of feelings of powerlessness, and the foibles of both conservatives (Beverly's rigid sense of propriety) and liberals (one witness against Beverly is discredited because she doesn't recycle). His one stumble into heavy-handedness comes when Chip's girlfriend reacts to the difference between real blood and movie blood, but basically Waters keeps the tone light with his cartoonish style. This is "Twin Peaks" as performed by The Three Stooges.
Social commentary aside, SERIAL MOM is just plain funny. Waters goes for the gross-out from the get-go, as his name in the credits appears under a crushed fly; this leads to Beverly skewering her daughter's would-be beau, inadvertently removing some viscera, and to a messy sneeze which leads to anarchy in a church. There is a gleeful scene as Beverly clubs a woman to death with a leg of lamb while singing along to "Tomorrow" from ANNIE, and another at a concert where Beverly is led away in cuffs to a chant of "Serial Mom! Serial Mom!" The highlight, however, is definitely the trial, where Beverly defends herself in some very creative ways, while her family hawks "Serial Mom" T-shirts outside the courthouse. The opening is a bit slow, but SERIAL MOM finishes with high energy.
Waters sprinkles SERIAL MOM liberally with kitschy cameos like Somers, Patricia Hearst (as a juror who becomes the object of Beverly's ire) and riot girl band L7, but it is Kathleen Turner's performance as Beverly which sparkles. Turner has suffered through so many bad films in recent years that it is a pleasure to see her with something she can sink her teeth into. Her smiling amalgam of Donna Reed and Hannibal Lecter is frequently campy, but always appealing, creating another level of identification which implicates the audience. It's true that the characters in SERIAL MOM are one-dimensional, but that's almost appropriate given the film's framework as a "true-crime" re-enactment of the real events. SERIAL MOM is fun with an edge, and it killed me.
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 serial killings: 8.
-- Scott Renshaw Stanford University Office of the General Counsel
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