Polyester

source: Polyester

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 * 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

I was really disappointed with this film. The first Waters movie I saw was Serial Mom and I loved it. Then I saw Pecker and I loved it. Then I watched Polyester and really sort of hated it. The only thing I liked about that movie was DIVINE. She/He had a hell of a lot of talent. I was truly surprised. As a whole, I wouldn't recommend this film...

This movie has none of the shock that his previous movies were famous for. If it wasn't for the fact that Divine is the main character there would be no reason to watch this at all. I absolutely love everything that he made up to this point, but this is just different. His other movies originally received an X rating, but by 1981 all of the theaters that would play movies like that were closed down. Otherwise I'm sure that Waters would have continued to make the best movies.

I´ve only seen this John Water film by now and some of his 1990s flicks. "Pink Flamingos" (1972) must be still his best work, but this one has its moments, too! "Polyester" is a freaked out satire on the American Way of Life that lives in the first line from his great main actor Divine and his fabulous performance as cheaten and alcoholic house wife. Unfortunately, this guy died too early, because he´s the undisputed star of travesty actors like no one else before and after! Another memorable performance is given by David Samson as her Homer Simpson-like husband, who runs a * movie theatre and has an affair with his slutty secretary... Sometimes the humour reminded me on Water´s later movie "Serial Mom" (1994), however "Polyster" is much wilder and chaotic than this after all well-behaved comedy. And now I know where the Troma company steals so many ideas... "Polyester" is pure anarchy!!!

Cult director John Waters skimmed the outskirts of mainstream film-making with "Polyester", which had a bigger budget and better distribution than his previous output--it's even got Tab Hunter in the cast! Divine is a riot as a three-hundred-pound suburban housewife who is trying to deal with her wildly dysfunctional family: her daughter is pregnant, her husband is cheating on her, and her son is a notorious criminal (he sneaks up on unsuspecting ladies and stomps on their feet!). Although the movie runs too long and eventually wears out its welcome, Waters keeps it hopping with wild, wicked energy. Tasteless, hilariously overwrought, and full of memorable sight-gags (like a picnic that gets ruined by ants). The flashing numbers on the screen related to a crazy theatrical gimmick called "Odorama". Leave it to John Waters to come up with the first scratch-and-sniff comedy. ** from ****

WTF!!!!!!!, I have seen many effed up movies from all around the world, Japanese are the weirdest, French are the most artistic and American movies are the most tastless garbage.

This movie is just dripping with humor. The acting is terrible and over-the-top but exactly appropriate for this kind of movie. The dialog is always ironic. There are no jokes in this movie, this movie is a joke. I was smiling and laughing almost immediately from the start. The perfect dagger in the heart of all those bloated, pretentious, Hollywood films. Words cannot express how much I love this movie. Divine as always, is great. It contains such classic lines as "I'm going to get an abortion and I can't wait!" A purely farcical ridiculous look at suburban American life. Silly. Nobody can ever do or has done what John Waters is doing. He has created a style and put a moat around it.

My first John Waters gross-out movie had me hooked to his works, but after seeing his other, much better earlier movies, I see that POLYESTER isn't as great as it was cracked up to be. Divine is much too whiny (but good and campy) as Francine Fishpaw, a troubled housewife whose husband is a cheating porno theater owner, daugher is a *, son is a glue-sniffing foot fetishist, and mother is a hateful kleptomaniac. She finds salvation in her friend Cuddles(played superbly by Edith Massey) and new beau Todd Tomorrow (an overacting Tab Hunter). While POLYESTER has plenty of great scenes (Dexter stomping on womens' feet, LuLu ditching a dorky date for her real boyfriend BoBo, the gigantic Jean Hill hijacking a bus and popping a car tire with her teeth), it is one of the weaker Waters movies. Yet it still hasn't swayed totally into the mainstream and therefore has a cheap, low-budget feel about it. It also features great cameos from Waters regulars Mink Stole (Elmer's mistress), Mary Vivian Pearce (a nun), Susan Lowe (foot stomper victim), Cookie Mueller (foot stomper victim), Marina Melin (foot stomper victim), Sharon Niesp (a nun), George Figgs (abortion picketer), and the guy who played Dawn Davenport's teacher in FEMALE TROUBLE. POLYESTER is not one of my highly recommended Waters movies, but is a great start for those who want to gradually build a following of his films and is a nice farewell to lovable Edith Massey in her last Waters movie.

I hadn't seen "Polyester" since its initial release, and was curious about it after having just viewed the recent Criterion Blu-Ray of one of John Waters' earlier independent productions "Female Trouble" (1974). I honestly couldn't remember "Polyester" at all, or whether or not I had liked it, so I gave it another look today. I couldn't even finish watching it; what a wretched, unfunny mess of a movie. I guess Waters figured it was time to sell out for the Reagan era, which was probably a savvy business decision, but the way in which he did it, by doing a broad satire of a Douglas Sirk melodrama using trashy characters and a "reformed" Divine as the pathetic (rather than monstrous, as he played in "Pink Flamingos" and "Female Trouble") character of Francine Fishpaw comes off as a cheap, slapstick betrayal of his earlier anti-aesthetic. Perhaps Waters is even satirizing himself by having his heroine be a pro-life Christian, to show how "sick and twisted" heterosexual family life is in surburban America; recall that Edith Massey, playing Aunt Ida in "Female Trouble," states this explicitly in one of her scenes with her son Gator. I guess after realizing he couldn't "go home again" and had to do something totally different (his next film after this one, "Crybaby", was pretty iffy, too), Waters hit upon the goldmine idea of doing a musical, "Hairspray," which ended up rejuvenating his career and was later successfully produced as a Broadway smash. Waters didn't give up on his old "bad taste" aesthetic, however; his later film releases that hearken back to his Dreamland period, "Serial Mom", "Cecil B. Demented," and "Pecker", while all ultimately unsatisfying for one reason or another, are all superior to "Polyester". It is truly sad that Waters' last film with his star Divine was so lame, but it certainly wasn't because of Divine's acting. He gives it his all, but the script suffers from not having any sympathetic characters except maybe for Edith Massey. The casting of has-been Tab Hunter was probably a huge mistake, too, since he and Divine don't really have any chemistry onscreen. "Polyester" hasn't aged well at all, and should be considered a transitional misfire in Waters' career that he was, thankfully, able to put behind him.