Critics reviews

Waters balances his oddball nature with an urbane, witty and compassionate sensibility. And this is what shines through beautifully in This Filthy World... Director Jeff Garlin, best known for playing Larry David's agent in Curb Your Enthusiasm, smartly keeps the format simple and elegant: this is just Waters talking on a stage artfully decorated with trash.

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.

This Filthy World is not a John Waters film: it is a film of him performing a one-man stand-up show. Fortunately he is a charismatic entertainer. His camp sophistication has a delicacy and charm even when he discusses the most sordid of scenes. Immaculately groomed and attired, he looks and sounds the epitome of good taste. It is the actual content that you will find hilarious or offensive.

And strictly speaking it's simply unacceptable that a "film" about a man whose own work has been so gloriously confrontational, envelope-pushing and iconoclastic should be itself so creatively conservative, so risk-less, so safe. It's just as well, then, that Waters saves the day – and then some – by delivering a monologue about his life and unique career that's so compulsively entertaining and so consistently hilarious.

If the film proves anything, it's that people don't shock as easily as they did in Waters' heyday... some long patches in this show are surprisingly boring and unfunny. Maybe part of the problem is that the rest of the world has caught up with Waters - nowadays everyone's a provocateur. In-your-face gay-themed material is no longer such a novelty; there are simply fewer boundaries left to transgress.

“This Filthy World” is about 90 minutes of Mr. Waters just talking, mostly about his movies but with enough asides to remove almost all taint of self-promotion.

Part memoir, part lecture, This Filthy World reaffirms what most of us already know fromThe Wire: In a town full of delightful misfits, Waters may be Baltimore’s sanest citizen.