Polyester

This movie had me laughing my rear off when I first saw it. I have never been a major John Waters fan. His early stuff was more grotesque than funny in my somewhat less than humble opinion. This film is delightfully offensive and hilarious. It's sort of in the 'Animal House' league of humor. Which is a nice change of pace from Waters earlier flicks.

If John Waters did nothing else in his career he created the fabulous screen team of Divine and Tab Hunter. Back in the day when he was one of Henry Willson's chiseled clients he was linked often on and off screen with Natalie Wood. Personally I think he works much better with Divine.

Polyester and it seemed everyone was wearing the fabric in 1981 in some manner is a wonderful satire on the American scene. Like Married With Children the Fishpaws are your typical American family seen with a jaundiced eye. But the Fishpaws make the Bundys look like the Cleavers.

Our leading character is Divine all 300 pounds of her who has let herself go to seed married to this bum of a husband David Samson who is getting on with his secretary. Divine is a good Christian woman who lives the middle class life due to Samson's income from a drive- in he owns where porn rules.

Her daughter Mary Garlington is the Kelly Bundy of the 80s. And her son Ken King has issues that make Bud Bundy look like the All American kid. He's not called the Baltimore Stomper for nothing.

In the end she gets shed of Samson and meets her dream man, Tab Hunter. But that's only the beginning.

Divine created some very funny characters for John Waters in her life. But they had a touch of pathos and sadness as well. This was her great strength as a performer.

Waters serves up some real funny stuff in Polyester. It's positively Divine.

This later John Water's flick didn't have the same effect, grossness, punch, and ultimate filth of his earlier work, but it still is funny and suitable entertainment. The story of the Fishpaw family is a funny, polished satire of the corrupted and degenerately hypocritical world of the U.S suburb, but it's a mainstream movie, and a comedy, not a cult. The Fishpaws consist of Francine(christian mother and alcoholic, palyed by Divine), Dexter (shoe fetish and glue sniffer), cheating husband Elmer (runs a porn theater and cheats on Francine with Mink Stole, playing his cheap secretary Sandra) and slut daughter Lulu. Edith Massey is fabulous as Cuddles, she's better than Divine. Divine still is campy here, but not the godess of filth. A funny story of the Fishpaw family, centered around Francine, for whom nothing can go right and whose life is a tragedy. John Waters wrote and directed this mainstream, cleaned-up satire of the filthy suburbs supremely, but it lacks punch. Divine is too Christian and slapsticky, as the film is in general. This film was done with the Odorama process, in which when a number flashed on the screen you scratched your Odorams card on the matching number and a disgusting or beautiful scent would emit from the card. This is an interesting gimmick, and even though it's not reproduced on home video, you can tell what the smell would be because of the numbers still on the film and the imagery on screen at the time. An interesting but mainstream John Waters movie, which he wrote superbly.

Okay I know a lot of John Water's fans _won't_ rank this movie as high as some of his earlier work, because it is fairly "mainstream" for Waters. I liked Divine's performance in this film and loved the relationship with Tab Hunter. Also get to see another fav of John Water's, Mink Stole, as well as many other "regulars" to his films. If you haven't seen any of his work, I would start here. Sadly though, we don't get the theatre experience of *Odorama* (that's what the numbers signify---a scratch and sniff card that was handed out to movie goers.

After several years of crudely made, crudely funny films such as PINK FLAMINGOS, director John Waters graduated to a somewhat more sophisticated style, and POLYESTER has a comparatively (note the word: comparatively) subtle script, cinematography that doesn't shake, sets and props that don't actually look like they were salvaged from the local junkyard, and even a mainstream star: 1950s matinée idol Tab Hunter.

The story concerns the extremely dysfunctional Fishpaw family. Husband Elmer is in the porno movie business; daughter Lu-Lu is a mindless teenage slut with a nasty boyfriend; son Dexter is wanted by the law for a sexual fixation that leads him to stomp women's feet! And then there is the mother, poor Francine, extra large and utterly at sea, hoping against hope for middle class respectability in the midst of it all.

Tab Hunter (who is even more of a stud here than in his earlier pretty-boy days) romancing female-impersonator Divine is a major draw, and there is enough hilarity--ranging from a nun-enforced hayride for single pregnant women during a rainstorm to a black gospel singer who hijacks a bus to chase down a juvenile delinquent--to keep the show rolling, and the satirical edge is often quite effective.

Even so, POLYESTER lacks the same shock appeal that made Water's earlier work so entertaining--and it is a tremendous pity that we can't experience the film in its original "ODORAMA." Recommended, but primarily for Waters fans interested in seeing him in his transitional phase.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer