Review of Cry-Baby (1990) by Courtney O — 02 Aug 2010

Then as Now, a Teen Idol.

Let us take a moment and consider something. Many of the girls whose walls are adorned with dear Mr. Depp's picture are younger than this movie. In fact, people younger this movie are old enough to vote. I don't like thinking that, necessarily, and I'm quite sure he doesn't. However, it's a reality for both of us. Not only that, but he was cast in this movie because he was already in every teen magazine on the market for [i]21 Jump Street[/i], which I must admit I've never actually watched. However, he was on the show in 1987. Which means his career as a teen idol started when I was in elementary school. (I always forget he's as much older than me as he is.) I could be wrong, but I think his teen idol status is a real record. Yes, Sean Connery has always been dreamy, and there have always been the Elvis People, but I'm not sure they minted new Elvis fans once the Beatles really hit, and Sean Connery, if he was a teen idol at all, only was during the early Bond years.

Here, Depp is young Cry-Baby Walker, leader of the Drapes. His sister, Pepper (Ricki Lake), is heavily pregnant with her third child. His grandmother, Ramona Rickets (Susan Tyrell), runs Turkey Point, what is referred to in-film as "the Redneck Riviera." On the other side of the tracks, there is Allison Vernon-Williams (Amy Locane), the Good Girl of the Squares. Her grandmother (Polly Bergen) runs a charm school, attended by the leader of the Squares, the odious Baldwin (Stephen Mailer). And one day, while they are sitting next to each other to get their polio vaccinations, they meet one another's eye, and it is immediate love. Because of course it is. Only they're from two different worlds, and Allison is expected to be a good girl, get married, and live in the suburbs. Whereas Cry-Baby is basically expected to end up in the pen, or maybe the electric chair. After all, his and Pepper's parents did.

I'm wondering, now, how much my love of this movie is heightened by all those '50s juvenile delinquent movies I've seen with puppets in the corner. Most people my age, if they think of movies about the '50s, think [i]Grease[/i] or maybe--maybe--[i]American Graffiti[/i]. (Which is set in '62 anyway.) However, I know about the '50s fear of juvenile delinquency. I mean, remember here that Fonzie could, in the first season, only wear the leather jacket if he was actually touching the motorcycle. Otherwise, he wore a sweater. And this is probably the most charming, affable greaser in all of pop culture history. Here, though, you get an impression of the real imbalances between the classes. The Squares really are scared of the Drapes. Cry-Baby is pretty innocent, really; yeah, there's a lot of stealing of cars or just hubcaps, but I'm not really able to work out any crimes Cry-Baby himself has actually committed. (Unlike various of the cast and crew!) They're still terrified of him.

Also, as seems to be one of John Waters's preoccupations from the era, there are underpinnings of race. What I noticed in this viewing and perhaps never before is that the paddy wagons are segregated. Turkey Point notably is not, though of course there are no black people in the charm school and its talent show. Equally obviously, there are no black people in the (Baltimore) high school. However, when the Drapes are being hauled to jail from Turkey Point, the white boys get one paddy wagon (of the kind you picture when you hear the phrase). The white girls get another. The black kids all get stuck in the back of the same pickup with a barbed-wire fence around it. The reformatory is integrated (and run by Willem Dafoe!), but I don't know how realistic that is. It could be just so we see characters we've already encountered. I mean, we did see them get arrested, and they had to go to jail somewhere. It could be that I'm thinking about this more than John Waters ever did, but from what I've seen, I doubt that.

One of the things which really makes this movie stand out is its cast. Troy Donahue, for example, whom I'm pretty sure I've actually seen in a movie or two with puppets in the corner. David Nelson, son of Ozzie and Harriet and brother of Ricky. Iggy Pop, apparently sober at the time. Susan Tyrell was in that Elfman brothers cult classic [i]The Forbidden Zone[/i] and will, it seems, be in the inexplicable upcoming sequel. (Perhaps they're bored?) There's Waters regulars Ricki Lake and Mink Stole, of course. Darren E. Burrows, who was at the same time making a mark as the lovable Ed from Cicely, Alaska. The two most infamous members of the cast, as it happens, play mother and daughter. Wanda is played by Traci Lords, who was still at the time dealing with some of the fallout from her, um, previous work. As her mother was Patricia Hearst, who was not. After all, the pardon on her bank robbery rap had come through long before!