SERIAL MOM is a comedy I loved when it came out thirty years ago, in April of 1994. I think at the time I’d probly seen CRY-BABY, possibly POLYESTER, but I was fairly uninitiated into the films of John Waters. I just knew that at that moment he offered the perfect combination of what-we-need-right-now and what-no-one-else-is-making.
Kathleen Turner (V.I. WARSHAWSKI) stars as Beverly Sutphin, good old fashioned middle class mother, home maker, bird lover, cookie baker. She lives in a huge house with her dentist husband Eugene (Sam Waterston a few months before starting on Law & Order), college-age daughter Misty (Ricki Lake, filming right before she started her talk show) and high schooler son Chip (Matthew Lillard, who had only been in GHOULIES III: GHOULIES GO TO COLLEGE). They’re a family who get along well, and eat breakfast together every morning, sharing the newspaper. Beverly knows the garbage men by name and waves to them through the window. She hates flies and gum to a possibly unhealthy extent, but she seems like a nice lady. (read the rest of this shit…)
The only reason I heard of this indie teen movie is because it was filmed in Seattle. That’s kind of novel to us because most Seattle-based movies are really filmed in Vancouver (BATTLE OF SEATTLE, HOLLOW MAN 2, TRUE JUSTICE) or even, in the case of CHRONICLE, Cape Town, South Africa. Kelsey Grammer wanted to film Frasier in Cape Town, but he moved it to protest the end of apartheid. That’s a joke, Kelsey, I’m just busting your balls. Thanks for reading.
I don’t know if this is true but I heard it’s good luck for movie critics to start a year with a Clint Eastwood review. So I saved TROUBLE WITH THE CURVE for the occasion.
