Recensioni de* critic*

If Cecil B. Demented represents a technical advance over its predecessors, that isn't saying much. Waters displays a new penchant for mock-pretty effects (as in the rim lighting of the gala sequence) and proves he can handle action scenes skilfully enough. Otherwise, it's the same dog's breakfast as before, only this time the rough aesthetic bears a quasi-political import.

Now at last in Cecil B. Demented he has turned on Tinseltown itself with a hysterical comic assault that, though a good deal inferior to his better pictures, throws some light on his current frustrations.

Sly, strange, and very funny, "Cecil B. Demented", will particularly appeal to movie buffs relishing in its absurdity, and extracting, would you believe it, splendid comedic performances from both Dorff and Griffith.

An entertaining but wildly uneven satire, Cecil B Demented is a distinct comedown after Waters last picture, the criminally underrated Pecker. While that movie had focus, momentum, an engaging lead (Edward Furlong) and a brilliant supporting turn (Brendan Sexton III), Cecil B is scattershot, ramshackle and undermined by a miscast Dorff in the title role.

My best guess is that John Waters produced the talent shows in his high school. There's always been something cheerfully amateurish about his more personal films - a feeling that he and his friends have dreamed up a series of "skits" while hanging out together. "Cecil B. Demented" takes this tendency to an almost unwatchable extreme, in a home movie that's like a bunch of kids goofing off.

Like all Waters films, Cecil B. DeMented is an uneven work. It delivers a barrage of hilarious one-liners and then goes through stretches of unfocused activity. Of course, this film will have special delights for film aficionados for whom the in-jokes, like the dubbed version of Les Enfants du Paradis, will have an extra kick. If this movie does anything to rally crowds against cinema's mass distribution of mediocrity then it has served a noble purpose.

This is a sweet-spirited movie about a nice bunch of kids having good clean fun (only one of them ever shoots up), something like Waters' own "Hairspray" reimagined by Quentin Tarantino.

An affectionate parody of stardom, indie excess, and his own days as a guerrilla filmmaker, Cecil B. Demented boasts what may be his most ingenious premise since the battle of the filth in Pink Flamingos.

The rap on john waters is that Baltimore’s titan of trash... has lost his edge in the age of Farrelly hair gel. Pay no mind. Waters never fails to sneak in a few good ones.

"Cecil B. DeMented" is consistently amusing and smart in its choice of targets, but it lacks the manic edge of some of Waters' earlier movies. Its gross-out moments aren't as joltingly funny.

Cecil B Demented is not exactly the greatest story ever told. It sounds promising... But though there are many flashes of comic inspiration, it's a thin yarn (itself conventionally filmed, despite its subject) that won't do much to restore Waters' flagging reputation as one of America's most outrageous mavericks.

As the material starts strong and loses momentum, so does the director’s control, with the action becoming almost as chaotically handled as Cecil’s own opus.