From Charm City comes another Waters charmer - another minor masterpiece!
From start to finish Pecker is a delight and Waters infuses his script with enough loveable oddball characters to populate an entire city. Whether it's Christina Ricci's obsessive compulsive wreck of a laundress, the sugar addict Little Chrissy, eternally hopeful Mom, sleaze loving Tina or best of all Memama, who's room contains a shrine to the Virgin Mary - and a statute of the Virgin that shrieks "Full of grace! Full of Grace!" there is always someone to watch and enjoy.
Edward Furlong is all wide-eyed innocence - even when he's secretly photographing bottomless lesbian lap dancers at the and male strippers at a gay bar with the unfortunately hilarious name of "The Fudge Palace." Big sister, Tina offers a rip-roaring good time from Martha Plimpton, and Brendan Sexton III is a delight as Pecker's betrayed best friend. Throw in Mary Kay Place (!), Patty Hearst, Mink Stole, Lili Taylor, Bess Armstrong - and others - and you've got an ensemble that's having one helluva good time on screen!
The jumping off point for Waters here is the snobbism and cultural elitism of Manhattan versus the purity and earnestness of Baltimore "Trade Capital of the World." The New York art scene is an easy target and often lampooned but Waters brings his own unique sick twists and takes us along for a ride full of belly laughs, uncomfortable truths in perhaps his sweetest tribute to Baltimore yet.
There's just enough objectionable material to make the "typical American" uncomfortable - and I wouldn't want it any other way!