SERIAL MOM
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1994 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: Turner has a great time mugging as a
psychopathic Donna-Reed-like housewife in a particularly
interesting John Waters film. Objectively, this film is not
very good, but it is still recommended to fans of Waters.
Rating: 0 (-4 to +4)
David Lynch says it by showing a happy American family then panning his camera to show a chaos of worms and insects crawling around underground. Under the sterile and clean surface crawls and slithers the dark, hidden side of the world. John Waters makes the same point, but makes it a lot more fun. Inside every Harriet Nelson or Donna Reed is a raging, indignant Jack the Ripper struggling to get out and surgically slice away the ugliness from life. The first scene of SERIAL MOM really tells it all. It is a sunny, spring morning and perky mother Beverly Sutphin (played by Kathleen Turner) is happily serving a nutritionally balanced breakfast to her family including her prosperous dentist husband (Sam Waterston) and children Misty and Chip. Suddenly the pristine sweetness of the morning is invaded by a fly and Beverly goes into action to defend her territory. She stalks the interloper and mercilessly swats the fly who, in dying, seems to contain more juice than a blueberry. Beverly is one of society's antibodies. She knows that her world needs rules to maintain order and she is ready to defend it from people who steal parking spaces, who refuse to recycle, or who cannot be bothered rewinding rented videocassettes.
Waters has made Beverly Sutphin into everyone who has ever shown contempt for his films and the lifestyles he depicts. She is the personification of the pristine norms of society and their less than charitable defense. But paradoxically she goes so far that she also is placing herself outside the norms of the society she is defending. And Waters cannot resist turning her into a sort of hero standing against society. There is more than a little feel of the feel of FALLING DOWN here as Beverly channels our own indignant anger and takes vengeance for us against the selfish jerks who are making life worse for everyone else. So we have this interesting reversal for Waters where he is defending the precise people for whom through his whole film career he has been showing contempt.
This is also a very unusual film for Turner. The script calls for someone a little bit frowzy and a little bit overweight. In fact the part could have even been played by Waters's former star Divine. But matronly is certainly how Turner appears. It is difficult to look at her here and see the woman who was the passionate attraction in BODY HEAT. But time has shown that that sort of film is not really where she is best. Where comedy is hard for most actors, it appears to come as naturally to Turner as it did to Carol Lombard.
I am a little unsure what to rate SERIAL MOM. If I divorce myself from all knowledge of John Waters and the films he has made in the past and look at the film totally as a stand-alone film it is no better than cable fare. Certainly there is no shortage of films that make fun of the clean image of the 1950s situation comedy family. However, Waters has always made fun of those values so has special license to continue. It is a running gag. What gives this film its interest is that it is a John Waters film. I guess the fair thing to do would be to rate it only a 0 on the -4 to +4 scale, but still to urge fans of Waters and fringe fans (my category, by the way) to see the film. Even for them far more recommended would be the HBO film THE POSITIVELY TRUE ADVENTURES OF THE ALLEGED TEXAS CHEERLEADER-MURDERING MOM which does everything this film does and still manages to ring true and be perceptive.
Mark R. Leeper
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