Pecker (DVD)

Pecker (Edward Furlong), so named because of his eating habits, likes nothing better than taking pictures of the more seedier side of Baltimore. He spends his times snapping everyone and everything he sees with his old camera he brought at a thrift shop. Pecker loves his pictures although most other people don't see them as anything but pictures. One day Pecker persuades his boss at the restaurant he works at to let him have a showing of his work. He does and most people come in, look around and leave. However a New York art dealer, Rorey (Lili Taylor), shows up and thinks Peckers pictures are amazing. Soon all the New York art world are admiring his work, think ...  Read the complete review

Baltimore boy Pecker likes nothing better than taking pictures of his friends and neighbors in a small suburb where he hangs out with his kleptomaniac best mate. They like nothing better than to play Shops and extras which involves putting inappropriate items in unsuspecting shoppers trolleys. Pretty boys get Preparation H slipped in their carts and late thirties divorcees get sexually shaped vegetables so Pecker can get a reaction at the tills by the embarrassed customers for his picture portfolio. His family are a menagerie of characters who live in the same house, including the elderly grandma who has a ventriloquist Virgin Mary and a sugar obsessed ...  Read the complete review

John Waters, who has made his name being a high-trash auteur, gives us Pecker, a clumsy morality play that doesn't quite seem right. Waters is a master at detailing perversions, but when he tries to deliver a moral at the end of his story, it seems woefully forced. Pecker concerns a boy dubbed Pecker (because he pecks at his food, you perv), played by the perennial pre-pubescent Edward Furlong, who photographs all that he sees, especially the local freakshow of local Baltimore. Soon his depictions of the skidmarks of America catch the eye of high-falutin' New York art dealer Lili Taylor. Fame, fortune, and vast recognition are the fruits of his ...  Read the complete review

John Waters rarely disappoints, though some of his fans might just find Pecker a little bit squeaky clean (despite it's suggestive title) compared to the outrageousness of some of his earlier films. The gist of the story is the rise to prominence of a young photographer in Baltimore and the unwelcome intrusions that the subsequent attention brings. Now I have a special talent for making good things sound really boring, as I just did then, because Pecker is much better than that sounds. The genius of John Waters is to take a potentially dull subject - boy has talent/boy finds fame/doesn't like fame - and filling it with rich and strange ...  Read the complete review